


Narcissus

by lilypottersghost



Category: The 100 (TV), The 100 Series - Kass Morgan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Angst™, Becho is a thing in this so you have been warned, Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, Did I say angst?, F/M, a little bit of speculation, bellamy and clarke don't know what to do with their feelings, clarke and bellamy finally talk it out/fight it out/hug it out, don't be a Dick, mentions of becho, mentions of cannibalism, post-5x05
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-30
Updated: 2018-09-11
Packaged: 2019-05-15 23:59:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 33,923
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14800412
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lilypottersghost/pseuds/lilypottersghost
Summary: Clarke tries her best to avoid talking to Bellamy. Bellamy tries his best to get Clarke to talk to him. Meanwhile, Octavia uses whatever means necessary to keep Wonkru from joining Eligius. Chaos and angst ensue.Post-5x05. Basically, my version of 5x06 and on. The title comes frommy Tumblr postabout Ovid's Echo and Narcissus myth, in which Bellamy and Clarke are totally Narcissus.





	1. Head

**Author's Note:**

> BECHO IS TOGETHER IN THIS FIC (at least in the first chapter). i am indifferent to becho but i will not tolerate becho hate in the comments. i was going to tag this fic with a bellamy/echo relationship tag but i didn't want a PAINFULLY BELLARKE fic to show up in a tag meant for becho shippers. so just like... be cool.
> 
> i hope you're ready for blarke angst.
> 
> thank you so much to gigi @faeriefully on tumblr for beta'ing this fic!! she is the best and you all should follow her right away.
> 
> comments/kudos are greatly appreciated!!

Her heart’s desperate fingers reached through the bars of her ribcage, craving release.

Her head told them they had no right.

 _No right, no right_. She tied a scarf to cover her nose and mouth. She did Madi’s next.

The wind picked up, making sand and dust a danger to the lungs. Behind her, Indra still wheezed from a stretcher.

 _No right._ And there they were, just paces ahead, hand in hand.

Her scarf itched.

Six years ago, she had torn it off and held a gun to her head.

_No right._

 

Watching Madi meet Octavia had made her stomach roll. It was her own damn fault. She’d spent six years filling that girl’s head with memories from when Octavia had been bathed in butterflies and light. The bunker had killed all that shined, and Clarke should have known that whatever emerged would have worn Octavia’s face but housed a monster within.

Should have known that after six years, nothing would be the same.

Up ahead, she heard him talking with her but couldn’t make out what they were saying. Wasn’t her business, anyway.

Octavia’s eyes were too empty. Madi’s admiration was too blind. Clarke’s fault. All her fault.

Madi had practically squealed in excitement. Octavia had stared at the child as if she’d never seen one before.

The sun began to splinter between sand particles in the air. They had to duck their heads against the wind. Clarke yearned for Jasper’s goggles. Her heart shuddered.

“Do you think we’ll get to see the bunker?” asked Madi.

Six years ago, a bird had flown overhead.

 

* 

 

 _The heart and the head_. The oath had started on her lips and ended on his.

Had she known that she was the only thing that had kept him from falling apart on the ring? Without her parting words to him, he would have drowned in his grief for her. But he’d put his heart away. He’d walked the metal halls like he wasn’t imagining her beside him. He’d swallowed his tears with his algae, had put on a brave face for his people.

And, years later, he’d fallen in love.

Why did he feel like he should have told her? Why had he felt like he couldn’t?

His heart shook in a way that made his head falter.

Back in that easy sunlight after the sandstorm, when Echo had run to him. After the initial panic at Octavia’s reaction, his eyes had shifted to Clarke. He hadn’t known how to read her expression, but it wasn’t because of the six years between them. He’d been too late.

Her walls were already standing high.

He saw the evidence in her proud, stubborn chin. Her guarded, distant eyes. It felt like shards of glass against his skin.

He listened her murmuring to Madi behind him. Even after knowing she was alive for a few days now, her voice still put him at ease. Before Praimfaya, he wouldn’t have thought twice about it. To him, Clarke’s voice had been an extension of his own, though kinder to him. Now, it was liquid relief, like soothing honey tea. Her voice put a tranquilizer in the part of him that was wired to grieve her. Her name no longer made him heavy; it was the very thing that gave him light.

Clarke had drifted behind him on this trip. On the way here, they had walked side by side.

Six years ago, he’d collapsed on the metal floor.

 

For years, he’d lived in a prison created by Should Have, Could Have, and Would Have.

Would Have told him that he would have told her if he hadn’t believed he would see her again. It wasn’t his fault for having hope.

Could Have taunted him with all that he couldn’t have. Could Have summoned images of Clarke’s skin to haunt him in his sleep.

But Should Have… Should Have kept him up all night.

 _Should have told her should have held her should have kissed her should have kept her_.

Six years ago, he’d punched his bedroom wall. He’d then stayed up all night trying to remember the exact feeling of Clarke’s fingertips against his bleeding knuckles.

“ _Maybe there are no good guys_ ,” she’d said to him and his knuckles on that raven-black night eons ago. Her head had made his heart beat steadily again.

Clarke’s voice quieted behind him. He missed it.

Six years ago, he would have screamed _I love you_ loud enough for her to hear on earth if he’d known she was alive.

 

*

 

They arrived in Polis that night. Clarke checked on the injured, including Indra, one last time before heading to the rover. Clarke could have slept with the others in the square, but she and Madi opted to sleep where they were more comfortable.

The familiarity overtook her the second she stepped inside. Just days ago, she and Madi had been sleeping in here every night. She had been radioing Bellamy every morning before Madi woke up. They had been so safe, and Clarke had taken their safety for granted until Eligius crashed into their lives.

Clarke’s own ungratefulness ate at her conscience now. She should be grateful that Bellamy had come back to her, that he was alive, that he and all her friends had survived, making her sacrifice worth every breath she had taken without them.

She should be thanking every star in the sky. Instead, she was making sure Madi was completely asleep so she wouldn’t hear her sniffle.

Her friends had all hugged her. She’d nearly cried when Monty had kissed both of her cheeks, thanking her over and over again for what she’d done for them. Even Echo had embraced her fiercely. They all had stared at her as though she were another being entirely, something new and epic, risen from the dead. But she didn’t want to be any of those things. She wanted to be their friend. She wanted to be _one of them_. More than anything on earth, except for maybe her home in Shallow Valley. And peace.

But the loneliness felt just as violent as a war to her. It  _was_ a war to her. Six years was a long time. She had lied to Bellamy before, when he’d asked how she did it. Yes, Madi had helped. But she was only half the answer. _You_ , Clarke had almost said. _I had you_.

She’d been a fool. She hadn’t had him or any of them; she’d had a useless cube of metal against her lips. All this time, they were alive and couldn’t hear her. She’d been talking to no one. Not them.

They didn’t know her anymore. And maybe she didn’t know them.

She stared at Madi as she slept. Her cheeks, still round with youth, were milky white under the moon. Until now, she’d thought that she’d done right by Madi. Now, she wasn’t so sure. Madi had been in for a rude awakening when she’d met Clarke’s friends. Not just Octavia.

“Murphy isn’t as funny as you said he was,” she’d said offhandedly as they’d been getting ready for bed.

Clarke had taken a moment to steady herself before shrugging and feigning a laugh.

What else had she forgotten about her friends? About Bellamy?

She didn’t know anymore.

 

Looking at Bellamy was like someone had cut off her hand.

Someone had cut off her hand, and now it was lying on the pavement in front of her, and she was wondering how it had ever been a part of her. Detached from the body, a hand is such a strange thing.

She wondered if she had been Bellamy’s hand.

He came to stand next to her, thankfully alone. Clarke only nodded at him. He gave her one of those half-smiles, and though just yesterday she would have returned it, she bristled and looked away.

They were gathered in the same building as before the desert, a map spread out on the table before them. Octavia had called a meeting to decide their next course of action.

Clarke had ordered Madi to stay in the rover. The last thing she wanted was to put Madi in a room of Wonkru.

 _Blodreina_. Red Queen. Her name reminded everyone that Octavia was not, and never would be, a natural nightblood.

Bellamy shifted, and Clarke realized how close they were standing when his shoulder brushed hers. A rush charged through her. She stepped away.

“Something wrong?” he asked, concerned in a way that made her heart ache.

“No,” she lied. _It hurts when you’re close to me_.

Maybe when Clarke had told Bellamy to use his head, he’d taken hers to space with him and left her will all this heart. A restless, tired heart. It no longer beat; it simply clenched and unclenched, clenched and unclenched.

He shifted on his feet. “Where have you been lately?”

“It’s only been two days since we got back.”

“Yeah, but…” he trailed off, and she was grateful for it. “Where’s Madi?” he asked instead.

Clarke crossed her arms. “The rover.”

He grimaced. “Octavia wouldn’t—”

“We don’t know what Octavia would or wouldn’t do, Bellamy,” she said, and then, to prove her point, “Where’s Echo?”

He shifted uncomfortably. “Clarke—”

“We’re both afraid of your sister,” she cut in, unable to even think about what he was about to say. “Six years is a long time.”

He frowned the Bellamy frown that made her want to kiss it away.

Her heart clenched.

Unclenched.

 _No right, no right_.

 *

 

They were getting nowhere trying to reason with Octavia when they heard whirring from above. Bellamy exchanged a look of alarm with Clarke (at least that was something they could still do), and ran outside to see the Eligius ship hovering over the square. Not touching down, just sitting in the sky.

“This oughta be good,” Monty muttered beside him.

Bellamy shielded his eyes from the sunlight that glinted off the metal sidings and the air and exhaust that stirred up a wind. “Get the others.”

But Harper and Echo were already jogging up to them.

“What the hell do they want?” Harper asked.

“If they’re smart, they’re here to kill everyone,” said Echo.

Bellamy shook his head. “If they were smart, they’d have done that with a missile already.”

“Madi!” yelled Clarke. He turned to see Madi running towards them. She tucked herself into Clarke’s side.

“I told you to stay in the rover," Clarke seethed, but Madi's frightened eyes were trained on the ship above.

They were standing frozen under its menacing belly. Octavia stood directly under the center, looking as though she wanted nothing more than to jump five hundred feet in the air and bring it crashing to the ground with her bare hands. Her stance was wild, hungry for a fight, coated with rage. If the old Octavia had made him uneasy, this one terrified him to the bone.

Every armed member of Wonkru—which were most of them—had their guns trained on the sky, waiting for something to shoot at.

Bellamy waited for a hatch to open, for Diyoza to drop down with whatever hell she was gonna raise next. But that didn’t happen. In fact, nothing at all happened for several sustained moments.

Echo stiffened beside him, hand clenched around the hilt of her blade. “I don’t like this.”

“Diyoza likes building suspense—that’s all,” Bellamy said in a lame attempt at comfort, if you could even call it that. He recalled Diyoza after she had agreed to negotiate with him. Bellamy had started towards Clarke, but Diyoza had held up her hand. “ _No_ ,” she’d said, a sly smile on her face. “ _Not yet_.” Then, to her men, “ _Take her to a holding cell_.”

She’d gotten a thrill from seeing Bellamy’s utter agitation. He’d been itching to see the girl he’d left behind—or the woman she’d become—and Diyoza had been itching for a bit of fun.

A hatch opened, bringing Bellamy back to the present with a jolt.

Wonkru reacted immediately, some already firing at the door, but stopped at Octavia’s raised arm and scream of, “Hold your fire!”

From the hatch, a parcel dropped. A box with a parachute attached. For all they knew, the box could have been a bomb, but Bellamy doubted it.

Octavia kept her arm raised; no one from Wonkru shot the parcel down. She stepped back to avoid being squished when the large box touched down. Bellamy saw now that it was less of a box and more of a trapezoid with open sides and shelves inside. And inside… food. Crates of fruits, vegetables, everything Wonkru had probably been craving for years. After the first trapezoid, three more fell before the ship’s hatch shut again.

Clarke shook her head. “I can’t believe it.”

Bellamy turned to her. “Is she…?”

“She’s recruiting,” Echo butt in. “Unless they’re coated in poison or something.”

“Why the sudden change of mind?"

“I have a few ideas,” muttered Clarke.

“Like what?” he asked.

“The optimist in me wants to believe this has something to do with my mother and Marcus.”

Bellamy nudged her arm. “Didn’t know you had an optimist in you.”

She didn’t reply to him, only folded her arms in front of her, as if his touch had burned her.

Bellamy grimaced. He would have to speak with her later. If it had been six years ago, he wouldn’t be so torn up about it; but after not being with her for so long, for her to distance herself from him… it was unbearable.

There was something on top of the food. A speaker of some sort. It crackled then projected Diyoza’s voice through the square.

“This is Colonel Diyoza offering peace. We know you won’t survive long in this city. You have two days. Anyone who boards our ship before sunset two days from now will be granted asylum in Shallow Valley.”

With that, the ship rose into the air and flew a little way’s west. It must have settled down just outside the city’s borders.

The people in the square stood shocked for all of two breaths before a horde of Wonrku made a beeline for the food. Madi tried to run for it too, but Clarke held her back.

Bellamy saw what Clarke must have guessed just a moment later. To his horror, Octavia brandished her blade and struck down the first person to reach the food, causing all of her people to stop in their tracks.

“NO!” she roared, death dripping from the word.

His blood went cold. Over the past few days, he’d been trying to find his sister. He didn’t think she was anywhere to be found.

“We will not _eat their food_ ,” spat the girl wearing his sister’s face. “We will not kneel down and kiss their feet. Wonkru will not give in!”

Her people were kneeling at  _her_ feet. Sentiments of _Sorry, Blodreina_ , and _Forgive us, Blodreina_ , rippled through Polis.

“O—” he started to say, but Clarke clutched his arm almost painfully. She’d seen what had happened last time he tried to speak up.

He struggled against her grip, silently arguing with her. “I know,” she whispered to him, and he realized that she was holding herself back too. He took a deep, steadying breath. Her own shoulders dropped as his did, the fight dimming in her. She let go of his arm. An eerie calmness settled over them both as they took Wonkru’s lead and knelt.

The stone was cold against his knee. He tried not to replay the sight of Octavia raising a sword against one of her own people. He gritted his teeth. It couldn’t be.

She couldn’t be gone.

Wonkru rose. Spacekru did too.

Bellamy, Echo, Clarke, Madi, Monty, and Harper faced each other in a loose circle.

“I need to talk to her.” Bellamy eyed Octavia, who was heading into the bunker with her attendants around her in a protective loop.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Clarke said, as he’d expected.

“I know,” he said.

She sighed. “I need to treat the man she struck. He could still be alive.” Usually, Clarke would have gone running to the patient, but he noticed that she had one eye on Octavia. She must have been waiting until his sister wouldn’t be able to see her.

“Madi,” said Clarke, taking the girl by her shoulders and looking her straight in the eyes. “I need you to go back to the rover and stay there until I get back, okay?”

“But—” Madi began, but Harper intervened.

“I’ll take her!” she offered. “Madi, you can tell me the rest of the story you were telling us about that hurricane last summer.”

Clarke gave her a grateful smile.

Bellamy frowned. _Hurricane_. Flashes of lightning, a nail in between his knuckles, Clarke kneeling and begging on behalf of Finn’s life, electricity sparking from Raven’s wires to Lincoln’s chest. By now, Clarke had probably lived through more hurricanes than he could ever imagine surviving.

“Bellamy,” said Monty. “You shouldn’t go to see Octavia alone. I’ll go with you.”

Bellamy nodded. “Good idea.” He turned to Echo, opening his mouth to speak, but she beat him.

“I’m not hiding again,” she warned. “I’ll face this with you.”

He didn’t see a point in arguing. “Alright.”

Clarke gave a stiff nod. “Okay. So we have a plan.”

The circle dispersed. Harper and Madi started to the left of the square towards the rover while Monty and Echo went straight ahead towards the bunker’s opening.

He was about to join them when Clarke caught his sleeve. He turned to face her.

She handed him a radio. “Harper and Madi have one too. If she gives you any trouble, call us.”

“It won’t come to—”

“Bellamy, I said  _if_. I don’t like this either.” She straightened her back, lifted her chin a little. He knew this to be her steeling herself. But he didn’t know for what.

“Be careful,” she said, and then she was off.

Her words from inside that sandy tent came back to him now. _Octavia’s not the only one who’s changed, you know_.

 

 

Walking back into the bunker was like letting Hell engulf him.

His feet hit the blood-flecked floor. He smirked to himself. Eden. Hell.

He looked to Monty and Echo. Maybe space had been Purgatory.

They’d fashioned a door from the outside that led into the main chamber of the bunker: the fighting pit.

Bellamy surveyed the cages, the throne looking over it all. Yeah, Octavia had taken Rome too literally. The room reeked of death gone stale.

Wonkru soldiers milled around the pit, as well as on the spiral walkway, which was now separated by caged metal. That had been the first surprise when they’d dropped down into the bunker almost a week before. The cages, the people watching from behind them. Now, Wonkru seemed to be waiting for something. He caught sight of Miller in the corner, speaking in hushed tones with a guard Bellamy didn’t recognize. “Miller. I need to find Octavia.”

He deadpanned. “For what?”

If this were the dropship, Miller never would have questioned him like this. Bellamy never thought he’d miss the dropship.

“Miller, I need to talk to her.”

“Yeah? Talk to her, or challenge her?”

Bellamy’s jaw clenched. “Talk to her.”

Miller held his stare a second longer before shrugging. “She’ll be here any minute.”

Sure enough, he heard footsteps above them. Octavia’s boots on the floor of the balcony as she approached her throne. The pit fell silent as she sat. Wonrku kneeled.

“Rise,” she said. They obeyed. Still sent a chill up Bellamy’s spine.

“The enemy is testing us once again,” she began, voice not one of a commander but commanding the room nonetheless. “We will not accept their mercy like cowards.”

Wonkru yelled their agreement.

“We do not back down from war.”

More yelling.

Octavia held up a palm.

Silence fell.

“You are Wonkru or you are the enemy of Wonkru. Soldiers, it’s your job to kill those who choose wrong. Arrest anyone who tries to take their food. The guilty will fight tomorrow. And if you see anyone approaching their ship, shoot on sight.” 

*

 

Clarke was too late for the man who’d tried to take food. There were guards surrounding it now, guns drawn. They’d almost shot her, but she’d explained with her hands up that she only wanted to treat the man, who was now just a body.

It was startling how quickly Clarke had reacquainted herself with death since Eligius landed. She didn’t shudder as she closed the dead man’s eyes. “ _Yu gonplei ste odon_ ,” she said under her breath, hoping the soldiers wouldn’t overhear her honoring the dead.

She had only just closed his eyes when the soldiers were on him, lifting his arms and legs to be carried away.

“Where are you taking him?” she asked.

“Funeral rites,” said one of them cooly.

She stood, wiping her hands on her leggings. She should go check on Indra and the others.

They were in a building Clarke was pretty sure used to be a school down the block.

“Indra,” she said upon entering, grabbing her bag from a table by the front of the room. They’d brought up cots and whatever meager medical supplies they still had in the bunker, but this abandoned building was far from a hospital. “How are you feeling?”

“A little better,” said a female voice that wasn’t Indra’s.

Clarke startled. She looked up and saw a young woman at Indra’s bedside.

Indra coughed. “Gaia, I can speak for myself.”

Clarke blinked.  “Gaia. Hi.”

Indra’s daughter had shaved her head and was dressed in a dark robe. Hard lines had been etched into her face over six years. “Hello, Wanheda.”

Ah, she’d never made it past titles with Gaia before Praimfaya, had she?

She approached the other side of Indra’s bed, trying to hide her discomfort. “‘Clarke’ is just fine,” she assured, smiling tightly.

“Clarke,” said Gaia, but it sounded clunky in her hesitant voice. “I’ve been meaning to speak with you about your ward. Madi, is it?”

Clarke stilled with her fingers against the pulse on Indra’s wrist. “What about her?”

“I wondered if she would be interested in getting to know our novitiate. His name is Ethan, and he is around Madi’s age. Such isolation must have been lonely for her, not having any friends her age.”

 _Her parents only kept her in isolated so she wouldn’t be killed in one of your barbaric conclaves_ , she wanted to snap, but Clarke held her tongue. If Gaia wanted to make Madi a novitiate, she could. Over Clarke’s dead body.

“I’ll ask Madi,” she said, nonchalant. “But she doesn’t mind keeping to herself, really. She’s a shy kid.” That was a lie. Madi talked to anything with a face. But Clarke couldn’t have her hunted down.

Gaia nodded. “Well, I’ll leave you to tend to my mother. Octavia will be needing my advisement. Goodbye.”

Gaia was almost to the door when she paused, turning her head back, just slightly. “You know, Wanheda, Madi was born with her blood for a reason. Whoever kept her away from the nightblood scouts was committing a crime according to our old laws. She has been running from her destiny for too long.”

That was it. Clarke shot up. “Please, leave her be.”

“Very well. But I cannot promise that she will not come to us.” With that, Gaia was gone.

From her bed, Indra chuckled the best she could with sand in her lungs. “My daughter, the fanatic.”

Clarke plopped back down into her chair. “I’m scared, Indra,” she confessed, reaching down to take her pulse again.

Thump, thump, under her fingers. Weak, but steady. Indra might actually see this through.

“I am, too,” said Indra. “I am partly to blame for who Octavia has become. I love her almost as I love my own daughter, but she has slowly been losing grip on reality. She does not listen to reason the way she used to.”

Clarke moved to check the older woman’s temperature with a thermometer she doubted even worked. “Why? What happened down there?”

Indra shook her head. “Very much. But I think six years in darkness has driven us all to the edge of madness, not just Octavia. We’ve all done unspeakable things.”

Clarke shuddered now. “I wish I didn’t have to know, but I do. Bellamy’s in there talking to her right now and… and I don’t want him to end up hurt.”

Indra’s eyes took on a dark, pensive quality. She was looking back, peering into a past she hardly dared to acknowledge. Clarke knew the look from her own eyes, from those of her friends. Octavia may have done unspeakable things in the bunker from Hell, but Clarke had been killing since they landed on earth. Clarke and Bellamy had lived with the burden of leadership on their shoulders, and Octavia had been there to scorn and shame them at every turn. The girl was not built for leadership. Clarke had known it from the start.

“There was a year…” began Indra, catching Clarke’s attention. “The third after Praimfaya… when most of the population was killed.”

“Killed?”

The conversation was halted when Indra had to fight off a coughing fit. Clarke kept an ear to her chest, trying to hear the extent of the damage. Thankfully, her coughing faded after a few minutes.

“The hydrofarm had a malfunction,” she said, clearly determined. “We call it the Dark Year. Blodreina prohibited us from mentioning it.”

“The hydrofarm stopped working? I don’t understand—how did you—” Clarke gasped, remembering history class on the Ark, learning about what had happened during the worst of the food shortages. The Blight. “ _No_.”

Indra took a deep, rattling breath. “We did what we had to do.”

Clarke’s brow furrowed, putting the pieces together. “ _All of me for all of us_ ,” she muttered.

“Exactly,” said Indra. “It changes you, surviving something like that. And it changed Octavia more than I think even I realized at first.”

“I can’t believe it.”

“I think you can. I think you’ve been wondering what went wrong ever since your feet hit the floor of that fighting pit.”

Something still didn’t add up. “Why did you tell me this?”

Indra placed a hand on hers. “Thought you’d need to know eventually. To understand Octavia. She is the leader she is for a reason. And she was the only reason we survived at all. Without her, we would have been dead within the first year.”

From her pack, Clarke’s radio crackled. “Harper for Clarke, come in?”

Clarke excused herself from Indra’s bedside and tried not to sprint to her pack.

She clicked the talk button. “Harper, it’s Clarke.”

“Hi.” Due to the hesitance in Harper’s voice, it was evident that she, the same as much of Spacekru, was still getting used to Clarke not being dead. “Clarke, we weren’t able to get to the rover. It’s outside the city walls, and there are Wonkru guarding everything. I took Madi to where Monty and I have been staying instead. It’s an abandoned house just behind the entrance to the bunker. Is that alright?”

Clarke wanted to scream, _No! Too close to the bunker!_ But Indra was too close. As much as Clarke wanted to wholly trust Indra, she knew better. It was wise to keep up the charade that she wouldn’t kill any member of Wonkru who tried to recruit Madi. It was wise to keep quiet the fact that if Octavia, Gaia, or anyone so much as approached Madi about becoming a novitiate, Clarke would take Madi and get the hell away from here.

*

 

“If you’re here to admonish me, Bellamy, my orders have already been given,” dismissed Octavia.

“With all due respect,” it felt odd, but Bellamy thought it was necessary to start with that after her most recent warning to him in the desert, “maybe it would be wise to take Eligius’s offer. Then your people could have food again.”

“Wonkru doesn’t retreat.”

“We’re not even at war yet, Octavia. We would be, but it’s impossible to cross the desert between us and our enemy.” He nodded to her arm.

She clenched her fists. “What did I say about the next time you spoke against Wonkru?”

“I’m not speaking against Wonkru, I’m trying to help you.”

“Your help isn’t needed.”

Bellamy gave up. “Fine. Let your people starve. See if I care.”

She snarled, getting up from her chair to lunge at her brother, but she was stopped.

Echo stood in front of her, blade drawn. It had been a reflex to protect Bellamy, as involuntary as breathing. She probably hadn’t even thought about it. Dread stirred his stomach. He exchanged a nervous glance with Monty. This was the last thing they needed right now.

Rage spilled like blood down Octavia’s face. Echo, eyes wide, silently lowered her weapon.

“ _You_ ,” Octavia spat. “Outcast. I have half a mind to banish you again, but my brother—" she rolled her eyes, "—has obviously taken a _liking_ to you. But raise a hand against me one more time and you’ll be back to where you were before Praimfaya: in exile, left for dead, belonging to nobody.”

Bellamy clenched his fists so tightly he wondered if his fingernails would leave cuts in his palms.

Salvaging the remnants of her composure the best she could, Octavia sat again.

“Monty,” she said, the hard edge in her voice dulling when she looked at her old friend. “I want you to stay and take a look at our hydrofarm. But you two had better leave.”

Bellamy and Echo, as shaken and frustrated as ever, obeyed the tyrant’s order.

*

 

Clarke was organizing medical supplies, listening to Indra’s breathing and the rain, when the first gunshot rang out through the square. She ran to the window.

It had come from the road leading out of the square. Then came another, and another. _Pop, pop._ Until soon it was a hailstorm with human screams for howling winds. Clarke’s heart raced in horror.

She and Indra only stared at each other, frozen in shock. What was going on? Why were so many rounds being fired? It didn’t sound like the sporadic nature of a shootout. _No_. Suddenly, Clarke was back in the woods outside the grounder village, hearing round after round, the screams, the agony. She was running until the tree line broke, and there waited the shooter, smiling at her. _I found you_.

No. This sounded like a mass shooting.

Minutes later, the cacophony dwindled and brief silence took over, followed by more screaming.

Indra tried to sit up, but Clarke pushed her down. “No, stay here. I’ll go see what happened.”

On her way out, she grabbed a med bag, but, she realized as she ran at full speed across the chaotic square, she probably wouldn’t need it.

She was soaked within thirty seconds. The rain had no mercy on her hair, skin, and clothes.

There was a crowd in the center of the square, which she battled her way through, but the closer she got to the road where the shooting had occurred, the less interference there was. People must have been too afraid to go over there.

Bellamy intercepted her just as she was about to leave the square with a rough grip on her arm.

“Where do you think you’re going?” he shouted to her over the chaos.

“There could be survivors!”

He looked at her like she was crazy. Clarke could see how distraught he was, how practically unhinged, in the crease between his eyebrows, the downward slant of his lips. The lines the years had carved into his face were sharper than ever. Her breath left her lungs.

“There are no survivors!” he cried. “Her orders were shoot to kill!”

There were tears running down his face with the rain, she was sure of it. She wanted to wipe them away but held herself back. _No right_.

She felt her own throat begin to close. “What happened?”

He pulled her to the side of a building, a little alcove where there was adequate shelter from both the rain and the crowd. Echo was there, leaning against the wall. She acknowledged Clarke with a nod.

“A group of Wonkru tried to leave,” Bellamy said.

“At least thirty, probably more,” added Echo.

“They had snipers waiting on the ridge and on rooftops.” He shuddered. “It was an execution.”

So them talking to Octavia earlier clearly hadn’t accomplished anything.

Echo laid a comforting hand on Bellamy’s shoulder—sending a pang through Clarke—but he was on edge. Beyond consoling.

“I can’t believe she did this,” he said, running a hand over his face. “I can’t—I can’t…” His tortured eyes met Clarke’s. “What do we do?”

She wanted nothing more than to reassure him, to tell him that she had a plan, anything at all to make him stop looking so hopeless, but she was at a loss. She never thought they would be standing here, trapped in a bloodbath caused by Bellamy’s little sister. There was only one solution that crossed her mind, but it made her own blood run cold and she would never suggest it to Bellamy. Never. Just the fact that she thought it brought a wave of shame over her.

So she took a deep breath and said, “I wish I knew.”

“What if we tried to reason with her again?” Echo suggested halfheartedly. Clarke could tell from the other girl’s eyes that Echo had thought about the very same unspeakable thing.

“I’m afraid she'll kill you if we do,” said Bellamy.

As they spoke, Clarke thought back to the medbay, Indra’s horrified eyes, the way she’d tried to get up after the gunshots. “Indra,” Clarke blurted. “I don’t think Indra is in favor of Octavia’s newest law. I could see if she could talk to Octavia. If there’s anyone she’ll listen to, it’s Indra.”

Bellamy’s back straightened. “Maybe.”

“A second will always listen to their mentor,” said Echo.

“So it could work?” Bellamy asked.

“No promises. Your sister has changed.”

Bellamy snorted. “No shit.”

Clarke’s heart clenched. Echo had gotten him to laugh. He leaned on her. He relied on her now.

 _No right, no right_.

Her heart unclenched.

 

Bellamy, Echo, and Clarke went to Indra together.

The older woman was sitting up against her pillows, restless.

“Indra,” Clarke chided. “You were supposed to be resting.”

Indra glanced at Clarke, then at Bellamy and Echo. “Doesn’t matter, as I see you must need me for something.”

Clarked wanted to approach this topic more carefully, but it seemed the damage was already done. “We were wondering if you would talk to Octavia. I know you don’t want to challenge her—”

“Were those gunshots what I thought they were?” Indra interrupted.

Clarke nodded solemnly.

Indra sighed, shallow and grainy. “Then you won’t need to convince me.” She pushed herself up from her pillows. Bellamy tried to help her, but she whacked his hand away. Clarke almost laughed.

“Thank you for agreeing to this,” said Bellamy.

“I’m not doing this for any of you,” Indra snapped. “I’m doing it for Octavia. She can’t afford to lose any more of Wonkru. Their loyalty is slipping if a group that large tried to defect.” She sought Clarke’s eyes and met them with her own fearful gaze. “How many?” she asked.

“We don’t know,” said Clarke, “but a lot. Echo said upwards of thirty deaths.”

Indra stood up, but swayed on her feet. Echo caught her arm, steadying her.

“You’ll need someone to walk you there,” said Clarke.

Indra smiled at Echo. “I’ll take the outcast. I want to know how an Azgeda traitor ended up with Blodreina’s older brother.”

Bellamy bristled, but Indra’s lighthearted assessment made Echo smirk. “I’m all yours.”

And together, they left.

Bellamy turned to Clarke. “What now?”

She shrugged, dropping her unopened med bag on the table. “I need to check on Madi.”

He jumped on that. “I’ll come with you.”

“You don’t have to.”

“Sure, I do. I want to make sure Madi’s okay too.”

“But—”

“Come on, Clarke. You can’t dread my presence _that_ much.”

She faltered. Did he think she hated him? “I—I don’t dread—”

“Then what is it?” he challenged, his voice elevating.

“I just—” But she couldn’t have this conversation right now, so she gave in. “Fine, you can come.”

She indulged Bellamy in some small talk on the walk there. The streets were eerily quiet after all the panic of earlier. A calm had settled over like a cloud. The rain had ceased, a little bit of sun poking through the dark clouds.

Bellamy asked her questions about life on earth, and Clarke gave the shortest answers she could.

“What did you eat?”

“Berries and fish, mostly.”

“You dyed your hair with berries too, right?”

“Right.”

“Do you do Madi’s hair or can she do her own?”

“I do it.”

“Okay, remind me to teach you how to do a decent braid.”

Clarke laughed at that.

“Ha!” he exclaimed triumphantly.

“What?”

“That’s the first smile I’ve gotten out of you in  _days_. I was beginning to worry I’d never hear you laugh again.” His voice stopped short, a shadow passing over his face. Pain had taken him hostage. Clarke needed to get him back.

She longed to cup his face in her hands, to kiss his forehead until the creases there disappeared, but she couldn’t.

She could only duck down to meet his lowered gaze, then straighten, bringing his eyes back up as they followed hers. “That won’t happen, Bellamy,” she said gently.

He sighed, at least partially shaking off what had taken over him. “Good.”

They continued walking, approaching the steps leading up to the entrance of the house Harper had described.

“I’m sorry,” Clarke said.

They climbed the steps.

“For what?”

They opened the door. Clarke could see that the house was dingy, the walls covered with a deteriorating moss-green wallpaper and the floor spotted with fraying burgundy carpets.

 _I’m sorry for avoiding you, for not telling you how I felt before Praimfaya, for hating that you’re happy with Echo._ “I’m not sure,” she said.

Bellamy was about to say something—she could sense it—when they stepped inside. But all was cut short by the total emptiness of the room. No Harper.

No Madi.

“Madi?” Clarke yelled. “Harper? Madi?”

“I’ll look upstairs,” said Bellamy.

Clarke searched the entire ground floor. The living room, kitchen, and dining area. Nothing. She looped back around to the foyer and collided with Bellamy, who gave her a look that told her what she needed to know.

 _No Madi_.

*

 

Clarke’s knees buckled. Bellamy caught her with both arms, pulling her against his chest. “Don’t panic,” he murmured into her hair. “Don’t panic.”

It had been a long day. Now that Bellamy thought about it, he couldn’t recall seeing Clarke eat. That combined with the shock of losing track of Madi was probably enough to cause this.

He walked her over to the stairs, lowering her gently onto the second step, then crouched in front of her. He held her face in his hands. “Breathe, Clarke. Breathe,” he urged. “Monty is in the bunker looking at the hydrofarm. He probably just wanted Harper as backup and she must have taken Madi with her.”

Clarke nodded slowly, but her eyes were still glassy. “Wouldn’t they have radioed me?”

He stroked his thumb up and down her cheek. “Maybe they got distracted by the shooting and forgot.”

This seemed an adequate enough response to get her to stop hyperventilating. She calmed herself down, breath by breath, never moving her eyes from Bellamy’s.

“Have you eaten today?” he asked.

She shook her head, so he pulled half of a ration out from his pocket. “Here,” he said. “Consider it a thank you for the other night.”

She smiled, making Bellamy’s world lighter. It was just  _better_ when Clarke smiled.

She chewed slowly, a look that Bellamy couldn’t quite read passing over her face. Next, he handed her water and waited for her to get a few gulps down.

“Okay,” she said, gathering herself. All at once, she retreated. She leaned away, removed his hands that had dropped from her face to her arms so they weren’t touching at all. There she went again, hiding from him. His heart sank.

Clarke didn’t seem to notice his disappointment. Or she did, but she ignored it. Either way made him feel betrayed, at least to a minute degree. “I’ll go to the bunker, then,” she said.

“ _We_ ,” he corrected.

“No.” She stood up. Bellamy mirrored her. “ _I_. Last time you saw your sister, things didn’t go well. And I don’t want to ruin your relationship with her if she has Madi.”

What? “Why would she have Madi?”

She rubbed her lips together uncomfortably. “Gaia wants Madi to become a novitiate. I think Madi would sooner kill a Fleimkepa than listen to a word they say, but I can’t say the same about Octavia. You know how I told you about the stories I told Madi, about all of us?”

“Yes?”

She blushed. “Well, she kind of idolizes Octavia. That’s on me.”

He smiled sadly. “You had no idea that Octavia would be like this when we opened the bunker. So that’s not on you. But why would she want Madi to become a novitiate?”

She only contemplated his question for a moment before she said, “Because fewer people might defect from the Red Queen if they knew she had a real nightblood on her side.”

He shook his head. “Shit.”

“Yeah. Shit.”

“Are you sure you can go alone?”

“I don’t know, Bellamy,” Clarke drawled, “I’ve never been alone before.”

He winced.

“Hey,” she said, quietly, almost nervous. “A joke. We used to make those, right?”

He tried to recover. “That was supposed to be a joke?”

“Okay, fine, a half-joke. We definitely used to make those.”

“That wasn’t a good half-joke.”

“Well, you can’t expect much of me when I’m six years out of practice.”

He smiled. She took a step towards the door, eyes still trained on him. “Echo should be back at the medbay with Indra, so you can find her. You should also get some rest.” She seemed to clam up again. She was a frigid, distant Clarke he could hardly see even when she was mere feet away.

“I’ll try,” he promised.

“See you later,” she said, and it was almost awkward.

“See you,” he echoed.

What she didn’t know was that from now until the end of time, she wouldn’t be able to leave Bellamy without him spending every second of her absence wondering if she would come back.

Another symptom of their separation, of her almost-death. He would never be able to watch her leave without panicking again.

She closed the door behind her.

He backed up and collapsed on the second stair. 

*

 

Clarke shouldn’t feel so angry at Harper. It wasn’t her fault. Clarke hadn’t told her to keep Madi away from the bunker, just to keep her safe.

But Clarke was still fuming when she stepped into the fighting pit. And what she saw set her anger on fire.

Madi standing in front of Octavia, their heads bent in conversation.

“Octavia!” Clarke greeted, trying to smile. “Madi!”

“Clarke!” Madi ran over to her and Clarke pulled her close, kissed the top of her head.

“I was so worried about you,” Clarke whispered.

“I’m sorry,” Madi whispered back. “Harper had to come see Monty and left me with Miller. Then Octavia came and said she wanted to talk to me.”

Octavia smiled. It was a strange repeat of the offbeat smile she’d given Clarke in the desert. Made Clarke’s skin crawl.

“How’s your arm?” Clarke asked. She hadn’t checked on it since yesterday.

Octavia ignored her question.

“Madi has agreed to join the novitiates,” she said.

Clarke’s world stopped turning. She grabbed Madi’s shoulders and pushed her away to meet her gaze. “What?” She tried to keep her voice steady.

Madi shrugged nervously. “I didn’t want to—at first. But then Blodreina said that she only has Ethan. She needs someone else to learn the ways of the Commanders and Blodreina. Without that, Wonkru could fall apart if she were to die.”

Octavia’s wicked smile grew. “Exactly, Madi.”

“We shook on it.” Madi held out her palm for Clarke to see the dark line across it.

Her breath caught. “I see,” was all she could say.

She tried to steady herself. Imagined Bellamy’s lips against her hair, his hands on her face. _Don’t panic_.

“Okay,” Clarke said. She looked to Octavia. “Well, it’s getting late. How about we go get some rest and I’ll bring Madi back tomorrow morning. She apparently has some work to do.”

“Yes,” said Octavia. “She does.”

Just then, Echo strode into the fighting pit.

“Echo,” Clarke said slowly. “I thought you’d be back at the medbay by now.”

Octavia giggled like nails on an ancient Ark chalkboard. “Oh, no. See, Echo dragged Indra all the way here for a little chat, but Indra was too unwell to speak to me. They’ve been in what was our medbay all afternoon. What did you think would happen, anyway? Indra was magically gonna talk me into letting traitors go?”

“We had no such intentions, Blodreina,” insisted Echo.

Octavia shrugged. “Sure, you didn’t. Anyway, you’re all free to go.”

Clarke and Echo ushered Madi out.

As soon as they were in the street, Clarke held Madi close to her.

“Echo, I have to get Madi out of the city. Please, you have to help me.”

Echo startled. Nonetheless, she immediately noticed three guards on the street. Always the spy, she pulled Clarke and Madi off to the side, behind a pile of rubble. Only then did she ask, “What? Why?”

“Octavia is planning on making Madi a novitiate and using her to remain in power.”

“What?” Madi squeaked.

“Madi, I’m sorry, but Octavia is not what I said she was, okay? Did she tell you what happened today?”

Madi shook her head, sheepish and afraid. Clarke hated seeing her that way, but they didn’t have much time.

“A lot of innocent people were killed under Octavia’s orders today, okay? I’m afraid that she might want to hurt you someday, and I can’t let that happen. Remember the stories I told you about Commander Lexa, how the Fleimkepa taught her things that were wrong her entire life and then shot her? Remember?”

Madi nodded, biting her lip to keep from crying. “I remember.”

Clarke cupped her cheek and ran her other hand soothingly down her hair. “I never want that happening to you. And your parents never wanted that for you either. Which is why we need to leave. Tonight.”

Echo had been observing their conversation closely, carefully, with contemplation etched on her features. “Clarke, you can’t leave us. Not now.”

That surprised her. When she and Echo had last seen each other before Praimfaya, they were hardly less than enemies. Now, Echo seemed to respect her in a way she hadn’t expected. But what Echo said next surprised her even more.

“You can’t do this to Bellamy. You’re his best friend and—and he just got you back.”

“He’ll get through it.”

“He will, but Clarke, you don’t understand. He mourned you for six years and now you’re leaving after only six days?”

“What other choice to I have?” Clarke pleaded. “Give me one that keeps Madi away from Octavia and I’ll stay!”

Echo thought. In the shadow of the rubble in the dim sunset light, her face was softer than Clarke recalled. She’d only drawn Echo once or twice since Praimfaya. She saw now that she had never gotten her right.

“Stay here,” Echo began, formulating a plan, “and I’ll protect Madi. I’m a trained spy. I can keep her away from Octavia and Gaia. Trust me.”

Clarke was taken aback at what this woman was willing to do for her. It made her guilt over resenting her relationship with Bellamy even more potent. They were good for each other. She saw that now.

“I can’t ask you to do that, Echo.”

“You don’t have to ask.”

“You can’t protect Madi. It’ll give Octavia the excuse she’s been waiting for to kill you. And I can’t do _that_ to Bellamy.”

Echo grimaced.

Clarke touched her shoulder lightly, trying to be comforting. “He’s survived without me plenty, Echo. This won’t be different. And it’s my only choice.” She pushed any residual thoughts of oxymorons and cold sweat out of her head.

Echo nodded slowly. “I know a way out,” she said. “There are tunnels leading out of Polis.”

*

 

Bellamy was pacing the living room when Echo burst through the door.

“There you are!” He pulled her into a hug. She was oddly rigid. He pulled away. “What’s wrong? Where are Clarke and Madi? Harper and Monty?”

“Harper and Monty are still looking at the hydrofarm.”

“And Clarke?”

“Bellamy, we need to talk about that…”

There it was again. The dread. “Where are they?”

“I… It’s a long story, but we don’t have much time. You can get mad at me later. Right now I’m about to explain a lot to you and then you’re gonna leave, okay?”

Bellamy threw his hands up. “I guess!” he shouted.

“Okay!” Echo shouted, matching his volume, before returning to her hurried, quiet tone as she began. “Octavia tricked Madi into becoming a novitiate. Clarke is afraid for Madi’s safety and begged me to get them out.”

He clenched a hand around Echo’s wrist, his eyes narrowing as he came upon a realization. “You didn’t.”

“I did. I got them to the entrance of the tunnel and told them the way. If you leave now, you might be able to catch them before they make it to the rover.”

The tunnels were an unsettling location, one that Bellamy hadn’t thought about in a long time. The hot air underground, Echo’s hurried warning, getting to the top of the tower and noticing that she wasn’t there. He shook off the memories. But the confusion, the betrayal, the frustration was still there. How could she have helped Clarke leave him? He didn’t see Echo in the same light.

“Echo…” he started.

“No time,” she reminded. She pushed him towards the door. “Go. Go!”

“Right.” He hesitated in the doorway, but snapped himself out of it and took off across the square. He didn’t look back.

*

 

She was just about to close the door to the rover when she heard his voice because, fuck, _of course_ Echo had told him.

“Clarke!” His voice was hoarse. For how long had he been calling her name? “Clarke, don’t!”

She considered slamming the door and taking off anyway. But she couldn’t. His voice was like a tether, pulling her closer. She couldn’t just leave him.

So she hopped out. Her boots hit the dusty ground. Madi sent her a questioning look from the passenger’s seat. “Stay here,” Clarke said. “I need to talk to him.” Madi nodded in understanding.

The tunnel had led them almost to the exact location of the rover, which they’d parked just out of view of the city walls, behind a hill that hid them from whatever snipers were stationed there. Outside with no buildings to fracture it, the moonlight hit them at full force. Everything seemed more violent in the desert, all the more unhinged. Something about the emptiness, the vastness, the dry hopelessness, had led her to kneel in the dust and press the barrel to her temple six years ago. The same violence inhabited Bellamy now.

He stood panting just outside tunnel’s entrance, no jacket on, no hesitation or politeness left in him. The moon illuminated his slicked-back hair, caught the sharp angles of his face made sharper by unrest. She walked calmly, removed, to him.

“No,” he said.

“No?”

“You can’t look like that.”

She crossed her arms. “Like what?”

“Like you’re not really here. Like you’ve put your walls up. Like you’re back to isolating yourself like always. Except this time, I’m on the outside and I don’t know what to do about it, Clarke. I can’t stand this anymore.”

Something cracked in her exterior. Clarke could feel her heartstrings quiver and reach. Her ribcage couldn’t keep them in. _No right, no right, no..._

When he spoke next, he shouted. “I can’t believe you were gonna leave me again!”

Clarke pushed two fingers against his chest, like they were eighteen and twenty-three again, under trees they didn’t recognize and soaking up rain they’d never felt before. “Really?” she challenged. “Because last time I checked, _it was my turn!_ ”

Bellamy recoiled as if she’d stabbed him. “Is this why you’ve been avoiding me? Are you mad that I left? I—”

“No!” Seeing the hurt in him, her fire dimmed enough to step back. “I was proud of you for that.” Then a spark hit the ground, spreading. “But that doesn’t change the fact that I was alone down here for  _six years_ , Bellamy. And you came down and everything was perfect until—” She choked on her words.

His stare grew harder, shrewder. “Until?”

She shook her head. She should not say a word. She could not make him feel guilty for finding happiness with Echo. She would not expose herself for the ugly, envious monster she feared she’d become.

_Should Not, Could Not, Would Not._

“Until what, Clarke?” he pressed.

“I—” Her throat closed up. Standing there, staring at his weathered, pleading face, desperately trying to keep her feelings in check, was all too much for her. Tears gathered in her eyes, here to witness the heroine lose the one she most cherished.

“Until I—” she tried again. “Until I realized that we can’t just go back to the way we were. We’ve changed too much. We can never be to each other who we were before.”

That set Bellamy off again. “I can’t believe you, Clarke. I don’t care if you don’t think we can be who we were before, I don’t care about any of that bullshit. All I care about is that you’re here. With me. _Not dead!_ Like I thought you were for six years! I missed you so much some days I thought I wouldn’t make it. I tried to honor you with every decision I made. I _mourned_ you.”

Clarke snapped like a branch in the wind. “And I _waited_ for you!” Just like that.

Bellamy stepped away from her. She immediately regretted blowing up. She wanted him back. She wanted his warmth, his breath, his skin skimming hers.

He stood there, dumbfounded. “What?”

“I waited two thousand, two hundred, and two days for you. Only to find that I’m not yours anymore. We don’t belong to each other anymore, Bellamy. And you have to stop acting like we do.”

“What are you saying?’

“I’m saying that you have Echo.”

And there it was. The very thing she promised herself she wouldn’t reveal. Her heart, mangled and tired and black, was bleeding out in front of him. He stared at it as if it could burn him.

“What are you saying?”

“I’m saying… It’s not anything she did or anything she said. It’s who she is to you. I missed you so much that I thought it might kill me. And having you here... it's surreal. But all of that hurts so much when… when I can’t be who I want to be to you. Who I was before. It hurts to be around you, Bellamy. I wish it didn’t, but it does.”

And she watched him crumble.

 

*

 

He didn’t have to ask what she was saying anymore.

She was saying the very thing he’d never allowed himself to hope for.

“Clarke…” he whispered, tears in his eyes. “Who she is to me?”

Her eyes were unwavering on his. He saw his answer written in them. Tears fell from them.

His voice was hollow when he said, “We weren’t… we weren’t together… before.”

Clarke huffed. “No, we weren’t. Which is why I—I have no right to say any of this to you.”

He stepped toward her, placing his hands gently on her shoulders. She shuddered but didn’t push him away. “You have every right to say whatever you want to me, Clarke. Always.”

She let the sentiment hang in the air, breathing as it fluttered from his lips to the ground.

She sniffled. Opened her mouth, closed it. Opened it again. Closed it again.

“Spit it out,” he grumbled.

“Did you love me?” she blurted out. “I think you did but… I never knew for sure.”

Sometimes this girl—woman?—made his blood boil. “Clarke, won’t that just make you feel worse?”

“I spent six years down here alone, by myself, overthinking every interaction we’d ever had. I need to know. I need to know before I leave.”

“You _can’t_ leave!”

“Did you love me?”

“I can’t watch you leave—”

“Did you love me?”

“YES!”

 _“Why didn't you tell me?”_  Her voice was as raw as his own, as if every word sliced her throat as it left.

He forced himself to take a breath. “Do you want the real answer?”

“Of course I want the real—”

“I was scared we would both lose it if I told you. I was afraid for you because you’d just lost Finn and Lexa, and I was afraid for myself because I lost Gina, then Octavia fucked me up… and I was afraid that all of it would blow up in our faces.”

She had a calculating look on her face, her eyes darting back and forth. “What about Praimfaya? Why didn’t you tell me then?”

“I thought we’d have six years together, Clarke! Why didn’t you?”

“I thought I was gonna die. I didn’t want to burden you with that.”

He gave a grim laugh. “Well, it was too late for that.”

She licked her lips. Years of truth had just spilled out between them. It was too much to think about right now, the weight of the time they’d lost. They had lost so much time together.

Clarke shifted on her feet. “I—I have to go.”

He clutched her shoulders, pressed his forehead against hers. “Please.”

“I have to.”

“Clarke—I can’t—”

“You have to, Bellamy. For Madi. She isn’t safe here.”

“I’ll do anything—I’ll get Octavia to listen to me—”

Clarke yanked her face away from his. “She won’t, Bellamy! She’ll never listen. She’s too far gone. She’s done too many horrible things.”

“I can get her back.”

“You only know half of it.”

“What?”

Clarke inhaled deeply. “Indra told me something. Something I think you need to know.”

The world slid out from under Bellamy’s feet as Clarke recounted to him the Dark Year, the hydrofarm shortages, “ _All of me for all of us._ ”

He dragged a palm down his face. His breath was coming in short, disgusted gasps. He felt his lip quivering and scowled to stop it. “I can get her back… I can…”

“She ordered all of it, Bellamy! She had to watch her people consume each other to survive and enforce it when they wouldn’t. You once said to me that the things we do to survive don’t define us. But that, combined with the fighting pit…” Her face softened. She laid a gentle hand against his cheek, her thumb under his chin, and tilted his head so he met her eyes. “You can’t save someone who isn’t there to save.”

“So I have to lose both of you?”

“I’m sorry,” she sobbed.

In a fit of frustration, despair, wanting—he didn’t know—he crushed Clarke against him. “I can’t lose you again.”

“We _will_ meet again.”

He buried his face in her neck. “It is impossible for me to believe that.”

“You don’t have to believe it,” she said. “Because I believe it enough for both of us. Because I believe in _you_.” She kissed the spot where his shirt’s neckline met his skin. His hands shook against her back.

She began to pull away, and he fought every instinct within him that told him to resist, to keep his arms locked around her so she could never fade from his sight.

To his relief, she didn’t kiss his cheek as she stood back. “Goodbye, Bellamy.”

He couldn’t let it end there. He surged forward and pressed his lips roughly to her forehead. “Goodbye, Clarke,” he said.

They tore themselves away from each other before either of them could lose their nerve.

And then her back was to him. The door to the Rover slammed shut. The engine turned over. The tires kicked up dust.

She faded from view.

He needed to punch something. He cursed every star in the sky above. The same sky where he’d spent years grieving her, only to let her slip through his bleeding fingers once again.

This was the law of the universe, the human condition. He would love her, and he would leave. She would love him, and she would leave.

And the cycle would persist, as relentless as the tide, with every time the world ended.

*

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so here it is! i labored over this. i hope you enjoyed it and by that, i mean i hope it shattered your heart into a million pieces like it did mine. i expect none of this to be canon but it was so fun to speculate about the direction the story could take while also getting all my pent-up bellarke feelings out.
> 
>    
> come talk to me on tumblr @discovering!


	2. Heart

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Everything unravels in the heat of the desert.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> here it is! i decided that this chapter was getting too long and i had too much planned so guess what! this fic is three chapters now!
> 
> as always, thank you to the lovely gigi @faeriefully on tumblr for beta'ing this. she has the patience of a saint.
> 
> [and here's the playlist i made for this fic](https://open.spotify.com/user/ceilingflower/playlist/76rjPSdllZwktR1FbOJyDy?si=kDIovI6-QwCXsZBHaIqxGg)
> 
> hope you like this chapter!

Raven’s head was almost in his lap. Almost. He could feel her breath against his leg. They sat in front of the monitor on a couch they’d stolen from the old captain’s quarters. Diyoza had put them on security duty. They watched satellite images of Polis, catching Wonkru’s every move. At least, in theory. Shaw was more interested in watching Raven sleep.

Her face was so peaceful; she wasn’t awake to tell him how to do his job or rub in his face the hundred years of scientific advancement she had on him. “Barely,” he’d say. “The Ark was a tin can—you said so yourself. Plus, I got a motorcycle.” Raven would scoff. “I got to spacewalk.”

She was too much for him. Too good for him, more like. He’d sacrificed his own morals for the sake of three hundred prisoners. He’d watched McCreary torture her. He’d launched a missile expecting to kill a group of her friends in the desert. And now here he was, watching her people and waiting for them to attack them so he’d be ordered to launch another one.

She shifted in her sleep, the top of her forehead brushing against his leg. His breath caught. He collected himself and refocused on the wall of screens in front of them.

A red exclamation point appeared on one square in the bottom row, which displayed a way’s outside the city walls. Movement. Shaw shifted to look closer. He enlarged the square to take so it took up most of the wall. He zoomed in to see a moonlit outline of Clarke and her kid. They were alone. They seemed to have come out of nowhere and were now trudging over the sand towards the rover.

Red exclamation point it was.

He nudged Raven. “Hey,” he whispered, “hey.”

She stirred.

“Your friend Clarke is escaping.”

Raven shot upwards, her forehead colliding with his with a painful thump.

“Ah!” he yelped, rubbing his forehead. “Watch it, Reyes!”

She blinked away the pain and looked up at the screen. “How did they get out?” she asked.

“I didn’t see. They just appeared out of nowhere.”

Raven bit her lip. Shaw tried not to think about how hot that was.

“Tunnels,” she murmured. He liked seeing her like this: putting things together in her mind. It was like watching an artist paint. _Shit_. He needed to stop thinking like this.

“Tunnels?” he prompted.

“There were tunnels leading in and out of Polis. I never thought they would have survived Praimfaya, but Clarke must have used them.”

“Why do you think she’s leaving?”

Raven shrugged. “I’d want to leave, too. After the massacre we saw.” She shuddered. Shaw remembered that morning, when a group of thirty Wonkru had tried to reach their ship, only to be shot down by their own. Raven had hidden her face in his shoulder.

“Then why is Clarke alone?” he asked.

Raven shrugged. “It makes sense that Bellamy would want to stay—he’s never going to give up on Octavia. But he never would have wanted Clarke to leave… so it must be Echo who helped her get out.”

“What about the other two?”

“Harper and Monty have never been inside the tunnels. Bellamy and Echo have.”

Shaw raised his eyebrow at her, curious for context. From the little she had let slip about their time on earth six years ago, he knew how terrifying it had been. At least, terrifying to live through. But it was fascinating to hear about.

She sighed. “Echo told Bellamy there was going to be an ambush on a summit and led him there. He went to warn Clarke and everyone else there. So we were without protection when an assassin snuck into Mount Weather and blew it up, along with Gina,” she cleared her throat, “Bellamy’s girlfriend. I tried to stop it. I had to radio Bellamy and tell him what happened.”

“And now Echo and Bellamy are together?”

“Six years is a long time,” Raven said defensively. “Echo has proven herself. She’s made amends. We roomed together on the ring until she and Bellamy moved in together. She taught me to defend myself, even with my bad leg. I taught her how to read English and even a little algebra. She’s one of us now.”

“I see,” said Shaw. “Sorry for asking.”

Raven’s brow furrowed. “Wait, there’s someone else.”

Shaw examined the screen. Clarke had just started the rover, but there was a figure running toward it.

“Oh my God, Bellamy,” Raven chided as if Bellamy were right there to hear her. “What are you doing?”

“So I guess it was Echo who helped her.”

Raven smirked. “Evidently.”

There wasn’t any audio, but Bellamy appeared to be screaming Clarke’s name.

She got out of the rover. They watched them fight, embrace, then fight again.

“Raven,” Shaw murmured. “What’s their deal?”

She’d been watching with a troubled look on her face. Watching her friends cry had invoked a deep sadness in her. Shaw saw it in her endless brown eyes, which seemed to be brimming with memories.

“I don’t know,” she said earnestly. “I’ve never known.”

 

*

 

Bellamy arrived at the dorm to see his friends with their heads bent together in intense conversation.

Echo stood at the sound of his footsteps on the worn wood floor. Their talking ceased.

“Clarke?” asked Echo.

“Gone,” he answered, his voice colored by rage. “Are you happy?”

She grimaced. “She asked for my help. I gave it.”

“And now she’s driving across open desert into enemy territory,” he quipped.

Echo crossed her arms and rejoined Harper and Monty, sitting close together on the carpet.

Collecting himself, Bellamy sat down. “What did I miss?” he asked.

“The hydrofarms are practically useless,” said Monty. “Produce is next to none. I don’t know how we have any food at all.”

“What do you mean?” Bellamy asked slowly. Unadulterated dread seeped in through his clammy skin.

“The hydrofarm wasn’t meant to last this long. It’s breaking down,” said Monty. “I don’t know how it’s possible that there are any rations, let alone enough for each of us to have one a day. It’s scientifically impossible. There has to be another food source. There’s absolutely no way—”

Bellamy got up and tried to get away from the group but bent over and vomited on the floor before he could get very far.

“Bellamy!” He felt Echo's hand on his shoulder. He shrugged her off, rougher than he probably intended, but his mind was running too fast to think.

Wiping his mouth, he straightened. His friends were all watching him, dumbfounded.

“What is it?” Monty asked. “What do you know?”

Bellamy swallowed hard. “I need to speak with Octavia. Now.”

They started to rise and gather their things, but Bellamy barked, “ _Alone_.”

On his way out, he tapped Echo's sheathed blade against her hip with his finger in a silent question. She nodded.

He took off towards the bunker, armed and ready for whatever fight he had left in him.

 

“O!” he roared upon entering. He was met by a wall of Wonkru guards. “Get out of my way. I need to speak with my sister.”

“She's unavailable—”

“Like hell she is.” He pushed through them.

Octavia was sitting in her quarters. Niylah sat across from her.

“We need to talk,” Bellamy growled.

Octavia pursed her lips. “Bellamy—”

“Now, O.”

Octavia dismissed Niylah, and the siblings were alone.

“How did you get in here with that?” She nodded at Echo's sword.

He ignored her. Stepped toward her, seething. “I need you to look me in the eye and tell me what's in those rations.”

Octavia feigned ignorance with an innocent, hesitant smile. “What are you—”

“Tell me what you did with the thirty bodies you shot!” he shouted.

“Bellamy-”

“Tell me!”

“We did what we had to—”

He was shaking, almost laughing, almost crying. “Had to? _Had to?_ Octavia, Diyoza offered you peace and you chose to keep eating your own people rather than take it!”

“Wonkru doesn't back down—”

“Soon you won't _have_ Wonkru, O! You'll feed off each other until you all die.” Echo's words from before popped into his head. “Only a fool—”

“So you're listening to _her_ now?”

“You disgust me.”

“And you oppose me!” she shouted.

He scoffed, turning Echo's blade three times in his hands. “What are you gonna do, kill me and eat my flesh?”

Octavia was silent, and for a sacred moment, he thought he saw her mask crack. But just like that, she was gone again. Too consumed by power and desperation. _You can't save someone who isn't there to save_.

Underneath all of his anger, fear flowed through his veins. If he went along with her plans, his friends would eat flesh until that ran out and they starved. Starvation was a slow, cruel death. He would have to watch his friends undergo it. Even Octavia would have to surrender to death’s hungry hands eventually. He couldn’t let that happen.

Bellamy unsheathed his sword.

*

 

They drove until the night bled into a glowing dawn. Clarke kept her course based on the stars in the clear night sky and the compass on her dashboard. Soft music from Maya's iPod played quietly underneath the moan of the engine, something lighthearted from the 1960s that Madi often listened to.

Speaking of Madi, she was quiet, staring out the window as they went.

Finally, she asked, “Do you think we'll see them again?”

Clarke let out a shaky breath. “Of course we will.”

“But what if we don't? What if they become enemies of Wonkru?”

“They'll get out like we did, Madi.”

Madi pulled her legs up against her chest, letting her chin rest on one of them. “I thought I could change things, if I could get through to Octavia.”

Clarke felt a rush of affection for this little girl. She reached over and touched her palm to Madi’s knee. “If Bellamy couldn't get through to her, no one could.”

“No one?”

“Well…” Clarke trailed off, consumed by memory. “There was someone once, but he's gone now.”

“Lincoln.”

“Yes, Lincoln. Maybe he could have saved her. Everybody has someone.”

“What about you?”

Clarke shrugged. “I don’t think—”

“Bellamy,” Madi declared. “Bellamy can always get through to you. Even when you’re panicked. I saw it after the shooting in Polis.”

And Madi hadn’t even seen how he’d held her, touched her face, let her breathe, after they couldn’t find her.

Clarke shook away the memory of his skin. “You’re my person too, Madi—”

“But you've never yelled at me like you did with him.”

Clarke frowned.

“You've always had that inside you, but you keep it quiet when I'm around.”

“That's ‘cause you’re my... I’m like your…”

“You’re my mom. I know that, Clarke. But I don't know why you left Bellamy behind when he's your person.”

“It's complicated.”

Madi rolled her eyes. “That's what all adults say when things are simple.”

“Just watch the sunrise, Madi.”

“There she goes again, changing the subject.”

A laugh sputtered out of Clarke. “We'll see Bellamy again.” The words tasted like stale hope on her tongue. _Are we still breathing?_ She sighed. “I promise.” 

*

 

Octavia stilled at the sight of his drawn weapon. “So be it,” she said almost to herself, stone cold. “Bellamy Blake, I declare you an enemy of Wonkru. You are to meet your fate in the pit tonight.”

Bellamy stepped closer, not raising his blade. “If I can convince you to take Eligius’s deal before then—”

“You will not!” Octavia snarled. “Guards, take him to a holding cell!”

Miller took his sword, and two others grabbed his arms. He didn’t even try to fight them. They threw him in what looked like a locker room blocked off by cage-like bars. Their heavy footsteps faded from the room and suddenly, Bellamy was unnervingly alone.

Every time he blinked, Octavia’s empty eyes glared back at him. She was gone. All gone. He had failed.

 _But no_ , said a kind voice in his head that sounded suspiciously like Clarke’s. _You did right by her. You let her carve her own destiny into the surface of the earth. You let her go, Bellamy. You raised a bird and let her fly away. What she became in your absence is not your fault._

Bellamy breathed in, breathed out. Counted the pipes in the ceiling. Knew he couldn’t kill his sister, so he would lose in the pit tonight. Unless his friends thought of something, but he doubted there would be a way out of this. He’d forgotten how unforgiving the ground could be.

In this weighted silence, there was nothing to drown out the echo of Clarke in his head. _Did you love me?_ Her voice had been so fraught with desperation, so frayed at the edges, so tinny and wild. Had she waited six years to ask him that? Had she been thinking of him while he’d been falling in love with someone else?

Clarke survived alone. For six years. _With a child_.

Like Bellamy had. Long ago. With a child under the floor.

The loneliness had felt like a battle he never won.

And she had endured it without anyone else, without a soul, on a hostile planet determined to kill her.

 _I found her a few months after Praimfaya_ , she had said offhandedly as they’d trekked across the mean desert terrain. He’d wanted to stop her there, ask about those few months before Madi, but Clarke had kept talking and the moment passed.

Before Madi, Clarke had been alone. The real kind.

Knowing this was almost as haunting as her death had been. How had she done it? How had she kept herself together all that time? With no one?

And she left again.

Maybe he’d be sick again.

His thoughts menacingly dragged him towards Echo. She had helped Clarke escape, through the very tunnels where she’d led him on a wild goose chase a lifetime ago. He couldn’t help but feel betrayed. He knew Echo felt indebted to her—they all did—but he also knew that Echo was aware—had always been aware—of how he felt about Clarke. Back when they’d been enemies, she’d used him and Clarke against each other. On the ring, she’d witnessed him spend the better part of two years in the grips of brutal grief. She couldn’t have helped Clarke leave without understanding what it would do to him.

He hated this. Hated how the ground had done exactly what he’d promised Echo it wouldn’t: changed everything. Even living in a mere skeleton of Polis, he hadn’t been able to shake off the Echo of the past. She lived here, vivid in his memory of these streets, wearing white and black warpaint, leaving him for dead, raising her sword to slice off Clarke’s head, telling him she’d killed his sister, leading him from his cell by his chains, listening to him moan and scream.

That Echo had been his enemy. He loved the Echo that was here with him now.

But they wore the same face.

He hated himself for even thinking it. He loved her, he loved her, he loved her…

Her voice rose above his mantra, unbidden and unhinged. _Did you love me?_

He bit his lip so hard it bled.

Seeing Clarke and Echo together had been a surreal experience. Like seeing water running upwards. They had existed on two separate planes in his mind, and now here they were, all at once. It was disorienting. Bellamy didn’t like it.

Maybe that made him selfish. Maybe it made him naïve.

But he didn’t like it.

There were footsteps. He looked up to see Octavia and Gaia.

“Clarke and her nightblood are missing,” Gaia said without preamble.

 _The nightblood has a name_ , he wanted to say, but he held his tongue.

“We are about to question your friends. Is there anything you want to tell us?”

Without hesitation, he claimed Echo’s crime with the words, “I did it.”

 

The pit seemed deeper when he was thrown onto the floor. He looked up to see scores of eager Wonkru, banging on the cages, taunting him, shaming him. Bellamy stood tall but still felt shorter than ever.

When Octavia entered the pit from the opposite side, the people cheered. Bellamy knew there wasn’t a version of this in which he got out alive. Unless there was something left of his sister, deep inside her… But he couldn’t dare allow himself to hope.

He caught sight of his friends among the onlookers. Echo had her face pressed against the cage so hard Bellamy was sure it would leave marks on her cheeks. Harper and Monty held each other in trepidation. He looked at them all, trying for a smile. They tried back. None of them found any reassurance.

Gaia led them in whatever bullshit prayer Wonkru did to make them feel better about murder. Bellamy didn’t participate. Fuck it, right? He was already an enemy of Wonkru. He literally couldn’t sink any deeper.

Gaia’s voice descended like a fog over the pit. “Bellamy Blake, you stand accused of crimes of insubordination and treason. You are to fight for your freedom.”

Bellamy raised his chin. “And what does Octavia stand accused of?”

Gaia was apparently too appalled to respond.

“According to my brother,” shouted Octavia. “I am guilty of crimes against my people for things I did—I sacrificed— _to keep us alive!_ ”

Wonkru roared their disapproval.

 _Who we are and who we need to be to survive_ , Bellamy had once told a distraught Clarke, _are two very different things_. Looking at Octavia, he saw what he had been warning Clarke against.

Octavia ripped a sword from the wall of weapons.

This is what happens when you let  _who you need to be to survive_ become  _who you are_.

There’s no coming back from it.

Trying not to shiver, Bellamy reached for a weapon of his own. To his surprise, the hilt of a sword poked through the gaps in the metal cage. He looked up to see Echo holding it out to him, urging him to take it. This blade, after all, had been the only one they’d had to practice with on the ring. He’d fight the best with it.

Bellamy took the hilt and nodded his thanks to Echo. Her eyes were hard, determined when she nodded back to him. _Do what you need to do_ , they said.

But only a fool would think Bellamy had the strength to kill his sister.

Nonetheless, he kept up the act. He’d fight until he couldn’t any longer. He’d surrender without surrendering his pride. He’d make it look like a hard-earned loss, for his and Octavia’s sake. Or, just maybe, she wouldn't do it. He'd find out.

Octavia raised her weapon and advanced. Bellamy mirrored her.

“Pledge your allegiance to Wonkru, and you won’t have to fight me,” Octavia said, making the first swing, which Bellamy dodged.

“Take Eligius’s deal, and you won’t have to kill me.”

Bellamy struck.

To his relief, her reflexes were as sharp as his, and she swerved out of the blade’s path.

“Fighting with _her_ sword,” she observed.

He didn’t have the patience for this. He blocked her next blow with the length of his sword, but her blade was heavier. He knew he wouldn’t be able to hold this position. He was forced to consider other options.

He ducked and pivoted, his leg darting out and catching her foot, sending her flying and onto her back. She’d dropped her weapon in the process.

Wonkru jeered at him.

His foot came to press against her still-injured arm. She howled in pain, sending an arrow of shame through Bellamy.

“You can’t kill me when we both know you’re guilty,” she seethed.

“We all have things to answer for." As he said it, the ghost of a punch spread across his face, chains clinked in his ears, and his shame dissipated. But he still lifted his foot and stepped back, watching her get to her feet and retrieve her blade. He wouldn't let killing her be yet another thing she got to burden him with.

She attacked him with a new fervor, not sparing any rage behind her strikes. “What the fuck are you doing?”

“Trying not to lose,” breathed Bellamy.

“But you’re not trying to win.”

He didn’t answer, too busy ducking to avoid her sword’s furious path.

“My people will think you are weak,” said Octavia.

Bellamy pushed her away with the hilt of his sword. She stumbled.

“Sometimes mercy is strength.”

“Sometimes mercy is cowardice,” she countered, accompanying her words with a slash across Bellamy’s right calf that rendered it useless. His knees hit the floor.

She tried to hit him while he was down. He blocked her again just in time. But it took most of his strength to hold her off. He was nearing his end.

But still, he fought. He stood shakily, managing to get through a few more passes. He caught Octavia’s side, giving him a few moments to breathe while she fell back. But soon she was back and with more fury than before, and her blade was through his left side, just below his ribs, there and gone.

He knelt. Her leg swiped out, and then he was on his back, his weapon stolen from his hand. Wonkru’s shouts of victory sounded like he was underwater. He hardly felt the pain, only the warmth of his blood that seeped red along the floor and the shock that came with it.

What had just happened?

He could feel the tip of something against his neck. He saw Octavia’s face hovering above him.

She didn’t look ready.

 _It’s okay_ , he wanted to tell her. _It’s okay_.

She surged forward, willing herself to do it, to slice his throat and end it all, but the end did not come.

Her tortured eyes were liquid relief to his veins. _There she is_.

Her face crumpled. Tears fell from her eyes onto his cheeks.

 _She’s here_.

She couldn’t do it. He hadn’t been foolish to hope.

But… now what? Her people expected to kill him. If she didn’t, what would that mean for her reputation?

Wiping her eyes, Octavia straightened.

“I will not end this traitor’s life today,” she announced, still looking down at him. “He and his friends will perish in the desert.”

Then Wonkru was shouting. He was being dragged from the pit and shoved back with Monty, Harper, and Echo, who held him up as they were pushed through the streets of Polis by armed guards.

The walk to the border was excruciating. Bellamy’s side was still bleeding profusely where he’d been stabbed just below his ribcage, and his calf still stung with every step.

Just as they were about to be thrown out the gates, a voice called, “Wait!”

Miller ran up to them, panting. He came up to Bellamy, pushing a backpack into his arms. “The rations and first aid kit are from Octavia,” Miller whispered to Bellamy. “And the radio is from me.”

*

“So what’s your story, spacewalker?” Shaw’s voice roused her from her half-asleep, zoned-out state. Shaw was piloting the ship, and he’d mostly lied to Diyoza when he’d claimed he needed her help. She suspected he’d just wanted her company. They’d had to inform Diyoza of Clarke’s escape, and Raven had done her best to convince Diyoza that Clarke would be a valuable asset. Now, they rode by night back to Shallow Valley. Octavia had allowed no one to board their ship. Kane’s idea had succeeded in encouraging members of Wonkru to defect, but had failed to bring them any more men for Eligius.

 _What’s your story, spacewalker?_ It felt weird to hear “Spacewalker” from Shaw’s lips. For her, it was a word from another lifetime, when a boy with floppy hair had carried the blame for her crime with him to his fiery grave. She knew Shaw had only called her that because she’d mentioned spacewalking to him earlier, but it still felt weird.

“Don’t call me that,” Raven answered, leaning back in her co-pilot chair and yawning.

“Why not? That’s what you are, aren’t you?”

“But that is not my nickname. It belonged to someone else.”

“Someone else who spacewalked?”

“No, he never did.”

“You keep saying things that make no sense, and you expect me not to be curious?”

“Keep your eyes on the sky and out of the past, Captain,” she quipped.

“But the past of such a mysterious girl is so enticing.”

“You were torturing this mysterious girl just days ago.”

He grimaced. She kind of regretted bringing it up, but it got him off her back for a few minutes. Until he said, “You wanna know my story?”

“Not particularly, no.”

“I grew up in Saginaw, Michigan…”

Raven groaned. “And you had a motorcycle, I know.”

“That’s not the _only_ thing—”

“What else fascinating happened in Saginaw before the bombs, huh? I grew up with a drunk for a mother, living on half rations because she sold mine for alcohol. The only reason I survived was the boy next door, who organized an illegal spacewalk for my birthday because even though I got a perfect score, I was rejected from Zero-G because of a heart murmur. Then he fucked up and the alarms went off, and he took the blame because he was under eighteen and wouldn’t get floated immediately. He was sent down to earth. I followed him. Within three months Spacewalker had shot up a grounder village and was killed at the hand of my friend. Happy now?”

Yeah. That shut him up for a good, long while.

“My father was a drunk too,” said Shaw, having been quiet long enough.

Raven felt a pang of embarrassment. Sometimes she had to remember she wasn’t the only one in pain. “That sucks,” she said.

He smirked. “Yeah. It sucked. You have any siblings?”

Raven shook her head. “No one on the Ark did except for Bellamy and Octavia.”

“Well, I had three younger ones. Had to protect them from the old man, you know? Especially after our mom died,” Shaw sighed.

She cleared her throat uncomfortably. “I guess I got used to thinking that everything was perfect before the bombs.”

Shaw shook his head and gave a rueful laugh, meeting her eyes. “Guess parents have always been drunk idiots.”

Raven smiled. “Yeah. Seems like it.” She leaned her elbow against the dashboard, resting her chin on her knuckles. “Why’d you join the military? And get caught up with Eligius?”

Shaw shrugged. A surprisingly nonchalant response to such a life-changing decision. “At first it was just to get through school. But I’m not a bad pilot.”

She rolled her eyes. “Not bad at all.”

“And when they offered me the Eligius mission, I couldn’t say no. They upped my pay, and since I’d be gone for so long, it would all go to my family.”

“And you’d get to satisfy your secret sense of adventure.”

Shaw smirked. “What gave me away?”

“I can’t read people like Bellamy and Clarke, but I know a kindred spirit when I see one. Michigan started to feel like a prison?”

“Like a tin can stuck in space.”

“So you joined a mission and spent the next hundred years in a tin can up in space.”

“Watch it, Reyes. The mothership is paradise compared to whatever piece of crap you lived in.”

“But you never expected to come home,” she said, steering him back toward his story.

“No. It was hard at first. But I knew I wasn’t doing them any good by staying there, growing bitter with the world and with them. This way, I could get out of their hair and still send a paycheck home.”

“Bullshit,” muttered Raven. “They missed you.”

“Not for long.” A gloom settled over his face. “When I came out of cryo after a hundred years, I imagined that they must have had long, happy lives. Then I get down here and learn that based on Clarke’s story, they lived only a few more years after I left.”

Raven’s throat was scratchy again. “I’m sorry.” Then, because she thought it might help and because she was curious, she asked, “What were their names?"

“Tess, Robby, and Cate. They were nineteen, thirteen, and ten when I left.”

“And how old are you? Biologically, at least.”

“I’m twenty five.”

“But really, you’re—"

“I’d prefer not to say.”

Raven burst into giggles. “That must be so fucking weird.”

“I’m _ancient._ ”

“A relic from another time.”

He cracked a smile. That was enough for Raven, considering she’d just interrogated him about his three dead siblings.

“Why are we talking so much about me?”

“ _You_ wanted to talk about yourself.”

“That was before I realized it would be depressing as shit.”

Raven nudged his shoulder. “Welcome to the club.” She’d once said the same thing to Wick after he’d killed someone for the first time. She wondered if Shaw had ever killed anyone. He looked like the answer was probably yes, but there was a certain innocence in him that made her question.

Shaw shook his head ruefully. “It’s a shit club.”

They drifted into amicable silence. After a while of paying attention to the windows and screens in front of him, Shaw said, “Did you ever think about what you would have done if you lived before the bombs?”

Raven shrugged. “Probably the same thing I’ve always done. Fix things. Only it wouldn’t have been so life or death. And I probably wouldn’t have had to make so many bombs.”

“Remind me to ask you for all of your bomb stories.”

“Are you sure you want to hear them?”

“Oh, definitely. Favorite kind of campfire story. We’ll have all the time in the world when we get back to the Valley.”

Raven tilted her head. “We’ll be at _war_.”

“You and I both know they’ll never make it across that desert. We won’t have a war to worry about.” He said it so flippantly that Raven sat up straight. All the comfort they’d built between them turned cold.

“Those are my _friends_ you’re talking about, Lieutenant.” She got up to leave.

He reached for her arm, but she yanked it away. “Raven--”

“No, I’m tired. I’ll be going back to my cell.” She _was_ a prisoner, after all. “See you in the morning.”

She stalked from the room. But she’d only made it halfway down the hall when she heard Shaw shout her name. There was an urgency in his tone that made her turn around and head back immediately. He called her name again, and she saw him at the doorway to the cockpit, rushing her in.

“What is it?” she asked when she reached him, her leg screaming. This better be worth it.

“Your friends.”

 

*

The desert was worse than Bellamy remembered.

Monty and Echo kept him upright with his arms around their shoulders while Harper carried the pack on her back, walking ahead and attempting to keep some sort of navigation. As they got farther away, the parting jeers of Wonkru faded behind them.

“Clarke,” Harper shouted over the wind and into the radio. She cast a nervous glance over her shoulder at Bellamy. “Clarke, come in. Clarke, come in!”

Fire licked from the edges of Bellamy’s wound, but whenever he looked down all he saw was red blood made black by darkness. He smiled grimly to himself. Night. Blood.

Reality slipped through his fingers like water. Pain, dust, hunger, and wind meddled with his thoughts.

Voices blended with the wind; sand got in his eyes. His body felt lighter and lighter but he kept putting one foot in front of the other.

“Come on. Clarke, come in. Earth to Clarke! Clarke, we need your help. It’s Bellamy—he’s hurt. Clarke, _come in_!”

He stumbled.

All fell silent.

Hands on his face, fingers on his pulse.

All flickered and went black.

*

 

The tree line came into view around mid-morning. Clarke roused Madi.

“Hey, little  _natblida,_ ” she said. “We’re home.”

Madi’s eyes fluttered open. To Clarke’s dismay, she frowned. “Diyoza’s going to kill you.”

“No,” Clarke warned. “Don’t worry about me.”

“Too late.”

Raising a twelve-year-old was no joke.

Clarke had decided on the way here that it would be best if she went to Diyoza directly instead of trying to hide. If push came to shove, she’d beg for her life, but she hadn’t come up with any ideas beyond that.

So she and Madi were waiting in just outside the village when the ship landed. Clarke was jarringly reminded of the Eligius arrived. Clarke had watched their ship descend, hope blooming in her heart, until realizing that no, it wasn’t Bellamy coming down for her. It was an enemy.

She told Madi to stay hidden before emerging from the bushes just as the ship’s door dropped and Diyoza stepped out. Clarke put her hands up.

The older woman smiled. Clarke tried not to let her fear show.

“Well, well,” drawled Diyoza. “I’m having déjà vu.”

Clarke cleared her throat. “I’m unarmed. I’m here to—”

Diyoza crossed her arms. “Relax, Clarke. Raven already vouched for you. You were with Wonkru when we asked for recruits, weren’t you? Now tell the little one it’s okay to come out. McCreary, make sure Clarke isn’t lying to us.”

McCreary patted her down, and Clarke tried to keep her stomach from rolling. After Diyoza was satisfied that yes, she was unarmed, Clarke whistled for Madi to come out.

Clarke was proud of Madi for keeping her chin up, not wavering in the face of the enemy. Maybe she had done right by her adopted daughter.

“Her too,” Diyoza ordered McCreary, but Clarke protested.

“Can’t you pat her down instead?” she asked Diyoza.

She popped an eyebrow. “We’re both mass murderers, Clarke.”

“But you’re a woman. And I doubt you smell as rancid as he does.” She wasn’t sure why she’d thrown in the second part, but it seemed to do the trick.

McCreary curled his lip but Diyoza cracked a smile. She knelt in front of Madi and patted her down, keeping up her conversation with Clarke as she did. “Keep talking like that and we could be friends yet, Clarke.” She stood. “Now, I want to discuss the terms of your surrender as soon as possible, but first, we need you to take the rover back to the desert to pick up your friends.”

Clarke’s heart skipped a beat. “My friends?”

Diyoza nodded. “Seems like your boyfriend did something to piss off his batshit sister.”

 _Your boyfriend_. Clarke shook off whatever feeling _that_ brought with it.

She was still two steps behind. “They’re in the desert?” What had happened? Had they been banished?

“Raven will explain.” Diyoza cocked her head towards the interior of the ship. “Come on in. You can take the pipsqueak.”

Clarke didn’t move. “I don’t understand. I killed four of your men.”

“And I have a feeling we’ve both killed many more in our lives. You’re no threat to us now. Plus Raven says you can help Abby with her assignment, and you know this land better than any of us. But you’re on thin ice. Don’t give us a reason to kill you.”

 

Clarke had barely stepped foot in the cockpit before there were arms thrown hard around her.

How was it that Raven’s hair still smelled the same?

“Holy fucking shit,” she cried into Clarke’s shoulder.

“Hi,” Clarke said through her own beginnings of tears.

Raven pulled away and stared Clarke up and down. She knew Raven was noting every detail, like reading an equation for the first time.

“You chopped off all your pretty princess hair,” Raven said in disappointment, wiping her tears with the back of her free hand, the other not letting go of Clarke.

Clarke tightened her grip on her friend’s hand. “You got a new jacket.”

Raven punched her arm.

“Ouch!”

“ _That’s_ for dying on me, you idiot.”

“Raven, I—”

“I _said_ , start heading back with ten minutes left on the clock!” She threw her arms around Clarke again. “But I don’t know how to thank you enough.”

“You don’t have to, Raven,” she said earnestly. “I’d do it all again.”

Raven gripped her closer. “Shut the fuck up.”

“I’m serious. Living in paradise for six years was a small price to pay.”

“Do you want me to keep crying? Is that what you want?” Clarke laughed and tried not to get emotional again herself. This was a new Raven to her: open, vulnerable, almost aggressive with her love. She could get used to this version of her.

They separated for good, getting their shit together. Raven caught sight of Madi waiting in the doorway.

Her smile widened. “And you must be Madi.” She walked up to the girl and held out her hand. Madi hesitantly shook it. “I’m your Aunt Raven.”

Clarke giggled. “Madi, this is just Raven.”

“Hi,” Madi said, a little starstruck.

Raven straightened, glancing over her shoulder at the monitors, and then back at Clarke. For the first time, Clarke got a closer look at them. Shaw and Raven had zoomed in on four figures on the desert terrain.

“So, Bellamy must have fucked up big time,” Raven explained. “And you need to get them as soon as possible.”

Clarke walked closer to the screen as Raven continued, “They seem to have rations and water. They have a radio, too. They keep trying to call someone; I’m assuming you—"

“Fuck!” Clarke hated herself. “I didn’t even think to pack a radio. We had hardly any time.” It was all her fault.

Reading her mind, Raven said, “It’s not your fault. But... and it’s hard to tell from the camera,” Raven continued carefully, “but we think Bellamy is injured. We have no idea what happened, but Octavia must have banished them.”

Clarke nodded, steeling herself. No time to panic. She imagined Bellamy’s voice in her ear. _Breathe_. But staring at the fuzzy image of him before her, that was getting harder to do.

“I’ll leave now,” she said.

“Okay,” said Raven. She reached behind her and grabbed a substantial pack from the table. “Here’s everything you’ll need. Water, food, and a medkit. A satellite radio, too. Good luck.”

Clarke took the pack. “Okay. I guess this is goodbye again.”

“It was nice to meet you,” Madi said to Raven.

Clarke grabbed her shoulder. “Oh, not so fast. I just got you here.”

“But—”

“No.” She turned to Raven. “My mother isn’t in a state to look after Madi, is she?”

Raven shook her head solemnly.

“Then,” Clarke glanced at Raven and Shaw, “could you?”

Shaw started to protest, but Raven threw him a dagger of a look. “Yes, we’ll take the Hobbit.”

Madi frowned. “That’s what Murphy called me.”

“Believe it or not, Tolkien was all we could find to read on the ring. Someone must have forgotten their collection before Project Exodus.”

“Tolkien?” Madi repeated slowly, not understanding.

Clarke placed an arm around her. “He wrote a story, Madi, but don’t worry. Mine are better.”

She leaned down to meet Madi’s eyes. “I’ve gotta go. I want you to stay with Raven or my mom, okay? _Only_ them. If anyone else wants to speak to you, make sure either Raven or Abby is with you. I’ll be back as soon as I can.” She pulled her close, pressing a kiss to her head.

Clarke looked at Raven. “I wish we had more time to catch up.”

“We will,” Raven promised. “Just get our friends first.”

With one last kiss on Madi’s head, Clarke exited the room.

“But if you die on me again, Griffin—I swear to God—we are _not_ friends anymore!” Raven called after her.

Clarke grinned and yelled back, “I’ll try not to!”

*

Bellamy woke to a voice in his ear.

“We’ve got to keep moving.”

It was Monty.

 _What’s the point?_ Bellamy wanted to scream, but his throat was too dry to say anything at all. Monty held a canteen to his lips. Bellamy gulped down water hungrily, finally stopping himself because he knew they had to conserve.

“How long was I out?” he asked. The air was thick and hot. There must have been tarps in the pack Indra gave them. They were using it as a makeshift tent, or blanket over their heads, and a floor under their bodies. Better than nothing.

Monty shrugged. “Beats me. We kind of all fell asleep after you passed out.”

“On a scale of one to ten,” Bellamy grumbled, clutching his side, “how bad is it?”

After Murphy, Monty knew the most about healing out of Spacekru.

“I wrapped it. All we can do is hope for the best. Clarke will have to look at it when we get to the valley.”

Bellamy spared a glance to Echo and Harper on the other side of the tent, who were still sleeping. “Monty, you can drop the act. We both know Clarke isn’t coming for us. The signal on that radio must be shot.”

“We’ll make it, Bellamy.”

“No, we won’t.”

Monty’s face pinched in disappointment. He stared at Bellamy as he would a stranger. “What the hell happened to you?”

“Earth happened.” Bellamy sat up, ignoring the pain. “Let’s go.”

 

They were two hours in when he starts to stumble. Every time, Echo tries to catch him, and he shrugs her off.

“Bellamy, let me help you—”

“Don’t touch me,” he growled, surprising even himself.

It was getting to him. It was all getting in, like sand under his fingernails. It was under his skin. It had been for a while.

“Bellamy, we should take a break—”

He planted his feet in the ground. “You _helped_ her  _leave_.”

Harper and Monty, a hundred feet in front of them, stopped too but kept their distance. This had been brewing. They all knew it.

Echo crossed her arms. “So we’re gonna do this now.”

Bellamy clenched his jaw.

“Might as well spit it out, Bellamy—whatever grievances you have against me.”

“What are you talking about?”

“What did I do wrong, huh? On the ring, we all went by your rules, and everything was fine, but now I take one step out of line and you don’t speak to me for hours?”

“There isn’t a _line_ ,” he said between gritted teeth.

“Oh, but there is.”

He threw his hands up, but that hurt his wound. He hunched over. “Fine! If the line is not driving others away from the group, then yeah, you ran off the fucking field!”

He shouldn’t have said that. He hadn’t meant to say—

But it was too late. Echo stepped back, stricken. “I… I didn’t drive her away.”

 _But you did_. She would have left either way. But there was a version of this story in which she would have come to him first, and it was the version in which he was not with Echo.

It hurt so much, knowing how Clarke must have seen the two of them. It hurt so much, finding that deep down, he blamed Echo when he only had the right to blame himself. When he had seen Clarke again for the first time, it all had clicked into place except one thing.

It was clicking now.

As he watched, Echo’s shoulders slumped. Her fighting stance softened. She was hurt. He felt guilt make a home inside him.

“You haven’t looked at me the same way since we landed,” she said, tears in her voice.

Bellamy sniffed. “I haven’t been able to. I tried to. I really tried.”

He’d just wanted everything to be normal. He’d wanted just _one thing_ to remain unchanged.

But even the loudest screams got lost in the wind. Even the most triumphant of warriors spilled blood on forest floors. Even the strongest towers crumbled under the unforgiving knuckles of a vengeful earth.

Echo pushed against his chest, accusatory, frantic. “You _said_ nothing would change on the ground.”

Bellamy sighed, his heart cracking as he gazed at her crumbling face. He wiped a tear from his cheek, gritty with stubborn sand. “And you didn’t believe me.”

Echo was silent for a long while. Bellamy was beginning to think she’d put it to rest when she said, “There is a line. And I know what kept me there.”

He waited for her to finish.

She met his eyes. He didn’t know how to read her. Was she conflicted, afraid, dismayed?

“Your forgiveness. I was afraid that it was conditional.”

“It wasn’t.”

She gestured furiously between them. “Apparently it was!”

“This has nothing to do with me not forgiving you. Forgiveness isn’t about what people deserve, and it isn’t conditional.”

“So I didn’t deserve it?”

“Echo—”

“No, tell me.”

“Of course not! None of us do!”

“But there is _one_.”

He didn’t try to deny it. He had become many things in these past six years, but a liar was not one of them.

Echo shook her head incredulously. “She put your sister in danger and held a gun to your head, and you forgave her _the next day_. It took you three _years_ to forgive me. Three years, Bellamy. And I was nothing but loyal to you up there, from the moment I pulled that helmet from your head to let you breathe.”

“I’m sorry,” he croaked. He didn’t know how not to be cruel.

Love was built to be selfless, but Clarke’s made him feel selfish.

Echo let out a hollow laugh. “You’re forgiven.”

She stalked ahead of him.

He continued walking alone.

 

Their trek was a war against the desert. The desert began to win.

It started with Bellamy’s stumbling, then Harper’s collapse.

Monty gathered her in his arms, slapping her face and calling her name. She barely stirred.

“Maybe she needs to eat,” said Bellamy.

“She can’t,” Monty muttered.

“What?”

“She _won’t eat_ , Bellamy. I’ve been trying for hours. Maybe you would have noticed if you hadn’t been so busy breaking Echo’s heart.”

“I’m sorry, did I do something to upset you?”

“Yeah, you got us _kicked out of Polis!_ ”

“My sister is _killing and eating people,_  Monty!”

“And if Harper hadn’t known that, she would still be walking right now!”

“What would you have wanted me to do? Because if it were up to you, Monty, we never would have left the ring!”

“Maybe we would have been better off.”

“That place was fucking  _purgatory._ And Eligius would have killed Clarke if we hadn’t landed when we did.”

An unfamiliar darkness passed over Monty’s face as he seethed, “Wouldn’t have made a difference to us.”

Bellamy’s blood ran cold. Then, it raged in his ears. _Get. Out_.

He clenched his fists so hard they burned to keep from hurting Monty. He didn’t mean it, Bellamy tried to tell himself, but it didn’t work. Nothing worked when the oxygen you breathe is flecked with grit and sand. Nothing worked when you ate flesh instead of algae.

He ran ahead. Monty called after him, but Bellamy kept going until his knees buckled under him.

Even the loudest screams got lost in the wind.

*

“Clarke always tells me a story before bed,” Madi told them matter-of-factly as they were getting her settled in a bedroll on the floor of the cockpit.

Shaw scoffed. “We have things to do, you know.”

Madi shrugged and put her head on her pillow, which was just a bundle of clothes. “Guess I’ll have to stay up all night, then,” she said nonchalantly.

Raven looked up from where she’d been fixing holes in the ship’s firewall as per Diyoza’s request.

“You are  _so_ Clarke’s kid,” she muttered.

Shaw had known Raven and Clarke were friends, but he hadn’t known how close until Raven had all but attacked her. He’d never seen her light up like that. It had made his heart swell, no matter how reluctant he was to admit it to himself.

“Can you tell me a story, Raven?” Madi asked.

Shaw smiled. This kid was cute. He realized he hadn’t interacted with anyone so young for over a hundred years.

He pushed away any memories of Cate, his youngest sister.

“I’m a little busy, Madi,” said Raven. Shaw saw a spark in Raven’s eye when she swiveled in her hair. “Why don’t you ask Shaw?” she suggested with a shit-eating grin.

Shaw was ready to refuse until Madi looked at him with her big, brown eyes.

“Alright,” he said. He sat on the floor by Madi’s bedroll. She gazed at him expectantly.

He only thought for a moment before he began with, “A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away…”

Madi rolled her eyes, causing Shaw to stop short. “Is that Star Wars?” she said.

He sighed. “Clarke tell you that one already?”

She nodded. “They had all the films on the Ark.”

“Well, I hate to break it to you, Madi, but Star Wars is about the only story I cared about as a kid and I’m not very creative…” Her face fell, but he had an idea. “Why don’t you tell us a story?” He caught Raven’s eyes. “Raven and I have both been in space for quite a few years. We could use a few stories about earth to keep us sane.”

Madi gave him a conspiratorial look, her thick eyebrows raising adorably. “Do you wanna hear a story about Raven?”

He could practically feel Raven’s interest peaking. “About me?” she asked.

“Mmhmm. You were in a lot of Clarke’s stories. Most of them, actually.”

Raven chewed her lip. “I didn’t know she told you stories about us.”

“When I was little, she even called you Princess Raven. Then I grew out of my princess phase.”

Shaw rubbed his hands together. “Let’s hear one of those. A princess one.”

“Are you _sure?_ They’re super little kiddish.”

“I’m a little kid on the inside,” Shaw reassured her.

“Can’t argue with that,” Raven teased.

He really wished he could flip her the bird.

“So,” Madi began, sitting up in bed, “Once upon a time, there lived two brave princesses, one with gold blond hair and the other raven black. The gold princess was lost in a city that glowed so brightly that she could hardly see anything around her. All the people there had been blinded by the light, and it was only a matter of time until the gold princess lost her sight, too. The gold princess wandered for hours. She followed signs left for her but always came up short. She was being attacked by blind people, too. They found her by the sounds of her breathing.”

Madi took a deep breath as if demonstrating, then continued. “It was looking as though the gold princess wasn’t going to make it out alive when out of nowhere, a raven showed up to lead her away from danger. Then another, and another. Clarke—sorry, _the gold princess_ followed the ravens until she was safe again. She knew that it had been the help of the raven-haired princess, who had flocks of ravens that were loyal to her and her only because she spoke their secret language. Once inside the magic door, the gold princess pulled the lever and freed the blind people from the city of light for good. It was all thanks to Princess Raven. Without her, the world would have gone blind.”

Madi smiled proudly. Shaw’s mouth had gone dry.

Raven’s voice, small and thin, came from the control panel. “That’s how she told it?” she asked, big brown eyes made wider by disbelief.

Madi nodded. “It was my favorite for a long time. I know it almost word for word.”

Raven sniffled. “That was beautiful, Madi, thank you.”

The little girl said, “You’re welcome,” and, satisfied with herself, she rolled over to go to sleep.

Shaw strolled over to Raven. “You okay?” he whispered, leaning against the desk. She seemed to have eased up on him in the hours since he'd accidentally caused her to retreat from him, but he still felt the need to apologize."

She wiped her eyes. “Yeah, I’m fine.”

“Hey, I'm sorry about before. I was too flippant when I said we wouldn't have to worry about war. I know how much they mean to you now.”

Raven gave a watery laugh. “No shit.” She stopped fiddling with the firewall for a moment. “You know… I spent years blaming myself. Bellamy was worse, but I thought it was my fault too, that she was dead. We both wished it were us instead. And now… I just can’t believe she talked about me like that to Madi.”

Shaw shrugged. “It makes sense. Why not tell stories of your amazing friends to a little girl looking for some entertainment? But… you’re gonna have to explain that story to me somehow. I’m assuming it was some sort of metaphor…”

Raven grabbed his arm, sitting him down next to her. “Fine, but you asked for it.” She smirked. “Clarke left out some juicy parts.”

*

Clarke drove through the day and deep into the night. Around sunset, she noticed it in the distance. A sandstorm. Her time was limited and growing smaller.

She thought about all the times she and Bellamy had gone rushing to each other's rescue. Admittedly, it was normally him rushing to save her. Clarke had a bad habit of making enemies faster than she intended to, and Bellamy had a bad habit of thinking she was worth running after.

She’d tried radioing the group to no avail. Their radio must have been broken. Instead, Raven called in whenever Clarke needed directions, or whenever she had to ask her about Madi’s bedtime story, which had apparently sent Raven on a trip down memory lane.

“You’re too far south,” she said now, around midnight. “Just a little north and you’ll be on course,” then followed by a curious, “So what happened between you and Bellamy before you left? I just want to know if you two are okay.”

Clarke grimaced. She’d replayed the argument in her head a thousand times since it happened. She hadn’t exactly been planning on seeing Bellamy so soon when she’d admitted her love for him. Well, she hadn’t been thinking at all. It’d been a stupid thing to do. Maybe the sand here had amnestic properties. She’d get back to him and he wouldn’t remember anything from that night. She could hold him in her arms without feeling guilt bloom wherever he touched her; she could look at him without seeing her pain reflected in his eyes.

“You know about that?” she asked Raven.

“It was on the cameras.” She half-heartedly added, “Sorry for snooping.”

“It was a mess, Raven. I don’t think I can talk about it.” Why was she getting choked up? She hated this. “I don’t know if we’re okay.”

She heard Raven sigh over the radio. “You will be.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“You’re Bellamy and Clarke. One cannot exist without the other.”

Clarke scoffed. “Apparently, we can. For six years.” It tasted like a lie in her mouth. _Liar, liar_. She’d called him every day he was gone.

“Bellamy didn’t exist without you, Clarke. Not for one second. He made your memory his life’s purpose, you know that, right?”

Her world slowed. “No.”

“Well, he did. Whatever you told him before Praimfaya—he never said exactly what is was but, it stuck. He carried you everywhere he went. He was a different person. Like he was trying to be both of you.”

“I—” Clarke’s voice was raw. She swallowed thickly. “I only told him to use his head.”

Raven gave a sudden burst of laughter. “What?”

Clarke felt a giggle growing in her own belly. Of affection, hopeless love, confusion. “I told him to use his head, Raven. That’s all I said.”

Raven was full-on laughing now. “Well, he took it to fucking _heart_ , Clarke. Holy shit, that man is intense.”

She couldn’t stop laughing either. “Yeah, he is.”

She missed him. An empty ache deep in the cavity of her chest told her so. Right where her heart was meant to beat. She missed him.

They lapsed into comfortable silence for about an hour. Clarke was busy keeping one eye on the sandstorm in the distance, which was gradually becoming less distant, and keeping her other eye open because let’s face it, she hadn’t slept in almost thirty hours.

She clicked her radio to check in with Raven and make sure she was still on the right track.

“Raven, I’m getting real worried about this sandstorm.”

No answer.

“Raven? Raven, come in."

Nothing.

 _Fuck_.

How long had the radio been out? Had Raven been trying to contact her and she hadn’t known? What if she was completely off course by now and she’d never find Bellamy and her friends?

She took a deep breath. She couldn’t afford to panic, not now. Not in the middle of the desert, with her friends counting on her.

So she drove blindly into the dark.

*

He was back on the ring. It was dark, dank, and thrumming with machines. Algae tasted like iron blood down his throat. He stared down at the blazing earth, felt his skin burning off and saw it in flakes of ash floating away from him.

The dream swallowed him into oblivion and spat him back out into a plain white room. Mount Weather. He just knew. Quarantine. He was upside down, blood pooling in his brain. Things were blurred around the edges, but he knew it was Clarke’s feet in front of his face. She knelt before him. Her hand brushed his cheek. “ _I bear it so you don’t have to_ ,” she whispered like rose petals against his ear, then walked away, leaving him hanging, screaming after her until his throat turned raw.

He was in the Polis throne room, but the throne was thousands of feet in the air. She sat beside him. The floor, far, far below them, rippled and shifted. The carpet wasn’t a carpet; it was a sea of their people, kneeling with their foreheads against the floor. “ _Blodreina_ ,” they called him, “ _Blodreina_ ,” they called her. Because how were they any better?

He was on the ring again, where it had all began and where it all had ended. Without her. She was dead again, dead again. He would never see her again, never touch her again. She was just ash in the fire wind.

 _Who we are and who we need to be to survive are two very different things_ , he’d told her all those years ago. Why had he let her bear it, become someone she could hardly recognize, if she would just die in the end? _How dare he_ let her bear it? How dare he leave her behind? “ _Bellamy_ ,” her voice screamed from the earth below. “ _Bellamy_.” He punched the walls until his knuckles bled again, until there was enough blood to drown him.

He tried to swim to the surface. A palm was against his cheek. He thought he would ever feel her skin again.

“Bellamy.”

He tried to open his eyes. In the pitch black, there were headlights. A face hovering above his. A face he loved.

“ _Clarke_.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry this took me longer than expected. leave a comment/kudo on your way out! thank you so fucking much for reading this fic btw. i've never gotten such an overwhelmingly positive response to a fic and it warmed my heart more than y'all can know. thank you for reading. truly.
> 
> NOTE: don't expect chapter three for another few weeks! i am trying to graduate high school on time despite missing months of school due to illness, so i have mountains of work to do until then and will not be able to write. but once i graduate, i'll be free as a bird to write more fic and perhaps to start a fun project i've always wanted to do ;) stay tuned!


	3. Soul

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> the group reaches shallow valley, but the dangerous part is far from over.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry this took so long!! my life has been great and busy and overall more captivating than this show at the moment. in fact i kind of hate the show right now so i'm extending this fic indefinitely. it's basically my season 5 rewrite at this point.
> 
> blame this chapter on whomever let me read keats again

His voice was broken even to his own ears.

“ _Clarke_ ,” he repeated, reaching through the darkness.

“I’m here,” she was saying, “I’m here. I’m gonna take you home. You’re gonna be okay. I’m here.”

 _I’m sorry_ , he wanted to tell her—though he couldn’t quite recall why—but his tongue was heavy. Everything was heavy. His body, his eyelids, his pain. His blood was cement, his head impossible to lift when he tried to see her face. He was a disgraced Atlas buckling under the weight of the sky.

Both of her hands cupped his face. “ _Shhh_. I’ve got you. Don’t try to move.” She eased him back down to the earth.

Her touch slowed his wild pulse, pacified his mounting panic.

Then she was shouting for Monty to hurry up. There was a canteen against his bottom lip, and she was begging him to drink. _Stay with me, Bellamy. Just a few sips, Bellamy._

Her voice called to him from the surface, but he was sinking in the deep.

_Stay with me. Stay with me._

_Stay with…_

*

 

“Clarke, you have to treat him!”

“Tell that to the storm, Monty! Now help me get him and Harper in the rover.”

“But Clarke—”

“I know! I can’t fix him and drive us home at the same time. I’ll talk you through disinfecting the wound, but first we need to _get in the rover!”_

Fever, shakes, delirium. Clarke knew the signs of infection.

Lightning, wind, descending darkness. The storm was coming.

Monty carried Harper while Clarke and Echo lifted Bellamy by his arms and legs. His head lolled to the side in a way that made Clarke’s stomach contract with worry.

“Careful,” she muttered half to herself and half to Echo as they laid him down in the bed of the rover. Clarke opened the medkit, handing Echo the disinfectant and bandages. She touched Bellamy’s forehead one last time, allowing herself a precious moment to pretend that he was just sleeping, that he was okay and he was hers, before climbing into the driver’s seat and starting the engine.

They were off. All Clarke could focus on was the ground under the rover’s tires, the storm raging to the north, the uneven hitches in Bellamy’s breathing.

“Clarke, what do I do?” asked Echo.

“Clean it the best you can,” Clarke yelled over the roar of the wind and engine. “Cover the wound with gauze, then wrap it up as tight as possible. I’ll stitch it up as soon as we get to Shallow Valley. I can make a tea at home to help his infection.”

“Infection?” Echo repeated in alarm.

“Yes,” Clarke said shortly. “Monty!” she called. “Try to wake Harper up and get her to eat something. I brought some dried fruit. That should be bland enough.”

She saw Monty rouse Harper in the rearview mirror.

She drove through the night. It didn’t take long for everyone in the back to drift off, leaving her alone with the sounds of their steady breaths, accompanied by Bellamy’s labored gasping. She occasionally reached back and pressed a hand to his sweat-soaked cheek. “ _Soon_ ,” she’d whisper. “We’ll be home soon. Hold on.”

About two hours later, when the sandstorm was just a distant memory fading into the rising sun, the chills set in. She could hear his teeth chattering. He started to jerk back and forth in his disturbed sleep, muttering senselessly and panting harder than before.

She had to stop the rover. It was impossible to keep focused like this, with him hurting in the backseat. His pain awakened a hollow ache within her, accompanied by a rising agitation. Only helping him would ease her.

She pressed on the breaks, coming to a stop between two dunes, and climbed into the back.

“What happened?” Monty mumbled, sitting up.

“The storm is gone,” Clarke explained hurriedly. “I need to help Bellamy.”

She reached over Echo’s stirring form to grab the medkit, accidentally stepping on the other girl’s hair.

“It’s too crowded in here,” Monty decided. “Everybody out!”

That roused Echo and Harper, who both followed Monty when he opened the back doors and sat on the sand outside. Clarke gave him a grateful look.

Echo stayed by the opening, studying Bellamy from afar. “What’s wrong with him?”

“I can help him, Echo, but you have to give me time.”

That seemed to be enough for Echo, who retreated from the rover as told.

Finally having the space she needed, Clarke started addressing the first problem: chills. She gathered all the blankets she had and spread them over his body, making sure they covered him up to his chin, rubbing them down until they were snug. His shaking decreased just enough for her to address the next order of business: the wound.

She moved blankets aside to reveal his torso and winced. There was blood leaking through the bandage Echo had secured earlier. He must have reopened the wound in his fitful sleep.

 _Fuck_. She would have to stitch him up here. No anesthetic.

She rolled down the blankets to give her more access, rolled up his shirt to his collarbones to ensure it wouldn’t get in the way. In her cold, analytical state, Clarke didn’t have the time or thought to realize how much of his skin she was looking at. Not here, not now.

She called for Monty. He climbed into the rover, ready to help her in whatever way she needed.

“Hold him down, will you?”

Monty’s eyes widened. “Why?”

“This wound can’t wait.” She rifled through the medkit until she procured a suture kit.

“You’re stitching him up  _here?_ ”

“It’s the only choice. When he wakes up, do everything you can to keep him still, okay?” Monty only stared at her blankly. “ _Okay?_ ” she snapped.

He broke out of whatever hesitation he’d been trapped in, nodding profusely and taking hold of Bellamy’s arms.

“Won’t be enough.” Clarke shook her head, rubbing her hands with alcohol to sterilize them. “Sit on top of him.”

Again, with the hesitation. Monty had been in space for too long.

“Just _do it_ , Monty! You need to hold him down!”

He obeyed, sitting across Bellamy’s stomach. Bellamy twitched, mumbling something unintelligible.

“Hey, hey,” Clarke soothed, running a gentle hand through his hair. “ _Shhh_. You’re okay.”

Clarke took a deep, rattling breath, pinching the two sides of the wound together and readying herself to begin.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered in Bellamy’s ear. “This is gonna hurt, okay?”

He grunted in response.

“Try to stay still.”

He nodded.

She stuffed a cloth in his mouth. “Bite on this when it hurts,” she instructed, and he grunted again, trusting her.

This would be harder get herself to do now that she knew he was awake. She pressed the tip of the suture into his skin. He flinched but didn’t start moaning in pain until she’d poked through and moved to the opposite side of the wound.

Then moaning turned into muffled screaming as she kept going, and his every howl of pain was a blow to her chest.

“I’m sorry,” she cried, hardly aware of what she was saying as she continued. “I’m sorry, Bellamy, I’ll be done soon. I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I’m almost there—I promise, baby, I promise. _Shh, shh_. I’m almost done—I swear.. I’m so, so sorry…”

Then she was done. His screaming ceased, along with his violent panting, which slowed into short, tremulous but steady breaths.

Clarke sighed in relief and slumped against the back of the passenger seat, feeling all her adrenaline drain from her system. She leaned forward, pressing a tired, open-mouthed kiss to his forehead.

She smiled, her lips still against his skin. “Cold sweat.”

“Oxymoron,” Bellamy answered, barely awake.

 _I love you_ , she thought like a needle through her own skin. _I love you_. But those words were not hers to say. He was not hers to love.

She bit her tongue and instead teased, “You’re hard to keep alive, you know that?”

“Sorry,” he murmured. “I’ll try harder next time.”

Somewhere along the line, Monty had left the rover to sit with the others outside, so it was just Clarke and Bellamy as she wrapped his wound with fresh bandages. He told her about the wound on his calf, which thankfully didn’t seem to need stitches, but she wrapped that one as well. All the while, Bellamy watched her, a pensive look on his face.

She finished with his calf, shifting back up to where his head was, leaning one shoulder against the back of the front seat again.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered to her, this time in full earnest.

“No,” Clarke said. “I’m the one who left. _I’m_ sorry. I should have told you.”

“It’s my fault you didn’t feel like you could.”

A grim smile took over her face. “It’s no one’s fault, Bellamy. Turns out six years went by and I’m still as emotionally closed-off as ever.”

Bellamy stared at her thoughtfully, to the point where she had to avert her gaze to relieve herself from his intensity.

“No, you’re not,” he said.

She brushed his hair back from his forehead. He sighed, his eyes fluttering shut at her touch. She bit her lip. “I missed you.”

He was drifting away again, but he cracked a weak smile. “It’s only been a few days”

“Not what I meant.”

Half asleep at this point, he didn’t seem to have heard her.

She shook her head, smiling to herself as she continued running her fingers through his hair. She told herself it was purely to soothe him, but she knew better. Her heart did not belong to her. He held it in his chest.

“Clarke,” he said suddenly, squirming. “I’m actually kinda hot.”

“At least the chills are gone,” she said. She helped him out of his blue long sleeve shirt, which was nothing more than a ruin of sweat and dirt, and then removed the all the blankets she’d covered him with except a thin sheet.

“Better?” she asked.

“Yes,” he breathed. “Thank you.” He turned his head so that his cheek was against her leg. “Stay with me?”

She touched his shoulder. “Of course.”

And just as quickly as he’d come back to her, he faded away again.

*

 

Madi and Raven were both sound asleep, but Shaw was up, watching the monitors, which had been Raven’s job, but she’d drifted off almost just after they put Madi to bed, her head slumping against the control panel. Shaw had told her to rest. She deserved it.

He heard clunky footsteps behind him.

“Status report?” came Diyoza’s order.

Shaw flinched. “Could you keep it down?” He pointed to Raven and Madi asleep on the floor.

Diyoza rolled her eyes. “Answer the question, Lieutenant.” At least she’d lowered her voice.

Shaw swiveled his chair and enlarged the view of the rover speeding towards the valley. “Should be another hour,” he said. “They stopped a while back, probably so Clarke could rest for a few hours. She’d been awake for two days.”

Diyoza smirked. “So she _is_ human.” She cocked an eyebrow. “What about the hostage-taker?”

“Didn’t see him. Probably still injured. Abby should prepare to treat them all as soon as they get back.”

“I give the orders here, Lieutenant,” she quipped. “When will they be back?”  
“Few hours.” Shaw turned to face her, crossing his arms. “What’s your plan with them?”

Diyoza nodded towards Raven. “Same as with her. Collar them until we know we can trust them. See what use they can be to us.”

Shaw shook his head. “We shouldn’t treat them like prisoners. What could five of them do?”

“The blonde alone killed four of our men,” she said, her voice sharpening.

“I joined you because I didn’t believe in using people, treating them like they’re nothing. You have yet to prove to me you’re any different from my crew.”

Diyoza only smirked. “Is this about Raven?”

“What?”

“Don’t play dumb, Lieutenant. I see the way you look at her. Don’t worry. As soon as I know I can trust her and her friends, that collar will be off. No harm done.”

Shaw’s shoulders clenched. It wasn’t good that Diyoza knew he cared about Raven. She had a knack for using people’s attachments against them. Nonetheless, he nodded and returned to his post at the control panel. As much as he hated it, Raven’s fate was out of his hands.

*

 

The world was like a fickle bird that landed on Bellamy only for fleeting moments at a time before flying away again. Consciousness was here and then gone, here then gone, never more than one of his senses at a time.

First he heard his friends talking, but only in fragments. “ _Clarke, stop the rover… You need… been up for two days…_ ”

He heard the engine shut off, then Clarke’s voice, “ _Only if… just watch him… no, I’m fine…_ ”

Next, he could smell metal. Someone was holding a canteen to his face, but he could not wake up to drink.

A short time later, he tasted cool water as it traveled down his throat. He had the strength to swallow once, twice, before the darkness overtook him once more.

Touch came to him next. He felt a hand on his forehead, gentle and definitely Clarke’s because it took the time to card through his curls once, twice, before leaving.

Finally, sight. The rover stopped. His eyes shot open. He saw Harper’s panicked face hovering above his own, shouting something he couldn’t quite hear. Then the rover’s roof above him changed to blue sky dotted by blurry green leaves. Peace washed over him. They had made it to the valley.

But then there was ceiling over him again and Clarke’s worried face, her lips forming words and her eyes filling with unshed tears. He yearned to tell her it was okay, he’d be all right, but the fever stole him from her.

*

 

Her mother was waiting on the steps of Clarke’s house as she ran inside with Bellamy close behind on a stretcher between Lieutenant Shaw and a miner who had offered her help. Monty and Harper were weak, leaning on each other for support, and Echo was so weak that she too was brought in on a stretcher between two miners.

Clarke allowed Abby to give her a quick hug before she was running in a whirlwind around her house, shouting orders and gathering supplies. Abby had already laid out the essentials: mattresses on the floor, a fire in the fireplace, bandages, water, disinfectants, but only Clarke knew the exact antibiotic she would need as she rifled through her stores in the kitchen cabinets. There it was in the drawer above under the cutting board: a small pile of dried red seaweed. Her mother had already collected a few buckets of water, and Clarke poured some into a pot and put it on the fire, throwing in a handful of seaweed.

Shaw and the other miner brought Bellamy in through the front doors. They were about to set him on one of the makeshift beds on the floor when Clarke told them to stop. “Bring him here,” she ordered, leading them to her bed in the far left corner of the room by a window.

She didn’t know why she did it.

She didn’t want him on the floor.

That must have been it.

Abby was putting a line in Monty, who, as it turned out, had given much of his share of water to Harper, so Abby was having trouble finding a vein.

“Mom,” Clarke called, “when you’re done, I need you over here.”

She knelt beside the bed, unraveling his bandages so she could take a look at the wound.

Shaw stood awkwardly by. “If I could be of any use—”

“Yes,” Clarke said. “I have fresh bandages, but get me an IV kit and a monitor if there are any left.”

“Got it.”

Meanwhile, she revealed the wound, red and yellow and angry even after the stitches. She grimaced. Infected.

She ran through the list in her head. Antibiotics, hydration, fresh dressings, hopes and prayers.

She re-dressed the wound and by the time she was finished, Shaw and Abby arrived with the rest of the supplies. Bellamy flinched in his half-awake state as Abby dug around with a needle in his hand, searching for a vein. She had to try three times, but finally found one with good blood return.

“These dehydrated veins are the worst,” Abby muttered, retracting the needle and attaching the line to the catheter. Clarke hung the bag of saline from the pole.

“I’m assuming the blade didn’t hit anything major?” Abby asked.

Clarke shook her head. “He wouldn’t have survived the journey if it had.”

Abby placed a tentative hand on her daughter’s shoulder. “You did well, Clarke. With all of them.”

She licked her lips and scanned her eyes over the room, over all of her friends asleep on their mattresses. “They’re not in the clear yet. They were out there for two days with little food and water, and no protection from the sun.” There were burns covering Echo’s face and arms, nasty and blistering. Harper and Monty had some too, but at least they’d had sleeves.

She turned to Bellamy, her face scrunching up in an effort not to cry. “And he has a high fever. I have no idea if he’ll live. So don’t congratulate me yet, Mom. It isn’t over.”

Abby frowned. “I was just trying to—”

“I know.”

An hour went by. It was a blur of coaxing food and water down her friends’ throats, trying to get Bellamy to swallow enough seaweed tea to give him a shot at surviving the infection, and treating Echo’s burns with a salve made from herbs she used to slather on Madi after she’d spent too much time by the lake in direct sunlight.

Then Diyoza barged in through the front doors, accompanied by a rush of chilly twilight air and another burly miner with a box in his hands. Funny. She thought the miner must be for intimidation because Diyoza seemed perfectly capable of holding the box herself.

“I hate to do this right now,” Diyoza said, lifting a metal collar from the box, “but I don’t know if I can trust you yet.”

She moved towards Monty, who was blinking awake on the closest mattress, but Clarke stepped in front of her.

“Wait,” she said. “They’re hardly able to _walk_ , let alone threaten you.”

Diyoza shrugged. “I’m not a gambler. Especially after you alone killed four of my men unprovoked.”

Clarke laughed. “Unprovoked? Excuse—”

“Let’s not do this now,” Diyoza snapped. “Why don’t you go first?”

Clarke curled her lip. “Fine. Then just collar me. The injured don’t need them.”

“This isn’t a negotiation.”

She gritted her teeth and tried to fight off memories of electric pain as she felt the metal ring snap around her neck. She swallowed thickly.

“There,” Diyoza said, uncharacteristically gentle. “This is just until you prove yourself.”

She moved on to collar Monty, Harper, and Echo. Clarke held herself back.

Until Bellamy.

“Wait,” Clarke said again. “He’s not even conscious.”

Diyoza shrugged. “So it appears. But why should I believe you, Clarke? How am I supposed to know he isn’t your secret weapon?”

Clarke held her tongue.

“I know you, Clarke. I know leaders like you because I am one. And you will stop at nothing to save your people. Take these collars as a compliment. And don’t worry. Your boyfriend will be fine.”

There it was again. _Boyfriend._ Diyoza didn’t know her as well as she thought.

Her miner roughly yanked Bellamy’s head up. Bellamy groaned.

“No—” Clarke pushed the miner away, holding Bellamy’s head up herself.

Diyoza rolled her eyes but didn’t object. The collar snapped around Bellamy’s neck, and Clarke gently placed his head back on the pillow, pushing hair out of his face as she did so.

Diyoza smirked. She always seemed to be smirking. “I’ll get out of your way. Try anything you know what happens.” She left.

“I don’t like her,” Bellamy murmured.

Clarke giggled and knelt by the bed. “Someone’s awake.”

“And collared like a dog.”

She poked his shoulder. “Stop complaining. You need to drink this tea.”

She heard a little voice call her name from the door.

“Madi!” Clarke exclaimed, running to meet her little girl halfway and hug her tightly. “I missed you.” She had a collar around her neck. Clarke grimaced.

“I was worried about you,” Madi said. She glanced back at Raven, who was checking on the rest of Spacekru. “But Raven and Shaw were fun to hang out with, I guess.”

“Damn right we were,” Raven said, pulling Clarke in for a quick hug. “Glad you made it, Clarke. I was _not_ ready to adopt a child.”

Clarke pulled Madi close against her side. “Especially not this one. She’s a handful. And she’s not even a teenager yet.”

Madi rolled her eyes, making Raven laugh. “Are you sure about that?”

“Don’t I get a hug?” Bellamy croaked from Clarke’s bed.

Raven’s face brightened as she ran to his side. And punched his arm. “You stupid idiot.” Then she hugged him.

“There wasn’t an escape pod,” Bellamy said, offended. Clarke remembered a long time ago when he’d told her about Raven and Murphy’s way down…

“Of course there wasn’t. Stupid idiot.”

“Bellamy!” Madi approached him. “I’m glad you’re okay.”

“Not yet, kiddo, but soon.”

 _Kiddo_. Clarke’s heart clenched.

“Clarke told stories about how you were always rescuing each other. I guess she wasn’t exaggerating.”

Bellamy shot Clarke a questioning glance, making her wish that Madi hadn’t said anything. “Yeah,” he said, “she’s saved my ass plenty of times.”

Clarke feigned nonchalance. “Just returning favors.” She turned to Raven as Madi and Bellamy kept chatting. “Hey, I hate to ask this but could you watch Madi again tonight? I need to focus on treating everyone.”

“You need sleep,” Raven argued, but stopped when she saw Clarke’s dagger-sharp look. Determination. She wasn’t going to change her mind.

“I’ll take her one more night,” Raven relented. “Don’t worry about it.”

 

Bellamy got worse. The chills started up again around ten PM, and she couldn’t wake him. She threw blanket after blanket on top of him, at the same time knowing that his temperature was only climbing. She put a wet cloth on his forehead, hung another bag of saline, and changed the bandages on his wound _again_.

Around eleven, Raven came in with Madi. “She couldn’t sleep without you,” Raven said. “Is it okay if she stays here?”

Clarke took an anxious look around the room, but nodded. “Yeah.”

After she was all tucked in, Madi asked for a story.

“I’m tired tonight,” Clarke said.

“Then I’ll tell you one! How about that time you and Bellamy—”

She flinched. “Madi, no.” He was just above them, so still on the bed that the sight of him caused her chest to tighten. She could not hear a story about them from before the earth brought them to their knees. Not when he could be dying on her bed.

But seeing the disappointment on Madi’s face, Clarke backtracked. “How about I read you something? Pick from the shelf.”

The shelf beside Madi’s bed only held five books, all with stained pages, scarred spines, and frayed backings: _Little Women_ by Louisa May Alcott (Madi’s absolute _favorite_ ), a kids’ book that she read to Madi when she was little called _The Battle of the Labyrinth_ by Rick Riordan (it was the fourth part in a series of which they did not have the first three or the last one, but after two apocalypses one mustn’t be picky), _Excel 2010 for Dummies_ (which came in no help at all), _Beloved_ by Toni Morrison (which only Clarke read), and the final, oldest book, which was a thick collection called _English Romantic Poets_ published by the American Book Company in 1935. How the ancient volume had survived this long was a mystery that eluded Clarke, and because she admired its resilience, it was the object she’d most cherished during those six years second only to the rover and her radio.

To her surprise, it was not _Little Women_ but this book that Madi plucked from the shelf and placed in Clarke’s lap.

“The grasshopper one please,” Madi requested, settling into the crook of Clarke’s arm.

“All right, here we go.” She opened to page 559 and took a deep breath in preparation. “ _The poetry of earth is never dead_ …”

 

Clarke drifted off somewhere in the last few stanzas of _Grecian Urn_ , and woke with a start at four AM. The sun had not yet risen, but the birds were expecting it soon; their voices blessed the valley with happy, whistled tunes. Clarke rose from the bed and wrapped a blanket around her shoulders. There was something so cold about early morning.

Her body slumped towards Bellamy as if he were a magnet and she a feeble stag crafted from metal. She placed a hand on his chest, feeling his heartbeat under her palm, letting her hand rise and fall with his shallow breaths. Her own heart calmed.

But then she felt his forehead. It was blisteringly hot, and panic gripped her by the throat all over again. His fever, despite the tea, was still raging.

She went to the fireplace and filled another cup from the pot, then sat on the edge of her bed and held it to his lips.

“Bellamy.” She prodded his shoulder. “Please.”

Nothing. She tried again and again, and he did not stir. The infection was holding him hostage, dragging him farther and farther away from her with the intention of dropping him on Death’s doorstep. She’d been there before and knew it to be a scary place. Back when her skin boiled with radiation burns and black blood spilled from her mouth, and she had fallen into darkness. To think Bellamy was there now…

Despair befell her. She put the cup down.

She thought to wake her mother. But what good would that do? Abby was fighting off her own demons. She would do no good, would offer nothing Clarke didn’t already know.

There was nothing she could do.

Except hope, and pray, and beg him to come back to her.

Defeated, she sat on the carpeted floor, grabbing _English Romantic Poets_ and flipping to page 557, where Keats’s sonnets began. She didn’t really know why she was doing this other than she had nothing else to do, but just sitting there would feel useless. Maybe reading to him would do something, maybe it wouldn’t. But she couldn’t do nothing.

She sat with her forehead against Bellamy’s arm, looking down to read the book where it sat on the floor.

She began with sonnets, picking her favorites until she got to the poems that were much longer, which she skipped because she’d never particularly loved them. She read him “the grasshopper one _—_ Madi’s favorite, you know _—_ ” and “ _Ode to a Grecian Urn_ _—_ your mythology-loving ass should like this one, Bellamy—” But then she got to the section of selected letters, where she paused.

There were passages so true that she dared not read them above a whisper. At first she’d meant to, but her voice died and she could only mouth the words quietly as tears sprang to her eyes, because he could never hear her say this to him, could never know the truth.

“ _My dear love, I cannot believe there ever was or ever could be any thing to admire in me—I cannot be admired_ , _I am not a thing to be admired. You are, I love you…_ ”

She closed her eyes, her lips moving against his arm.

“ _You could not step or move an eyelid but it would shoot to my heart—I am greedy of you—Do not think of any thing but me. Do not live as if I was not existing—Do not forget me—_ ”

 

*

 

He was hanging by his goddamned fingernails from a cliff, his feet dangling over miles of jagged, obsidian rocks below. Above, his sister sneered at him, her entire face painted red with blood. Something told him it was his.

“My brother,” she said, crushing his fingers beneath the sole of her boot, “my responsibility.”

His hand spasmed from the pain and as soon as she lifted her foot, he was falling.

He was surely dead. His heart leaped to his throat.

Then a voice cut through the oblivion, the rush of air became a caress, and everything slowed.

“ _I am now at a very pleasant Cottage window, looking onto a beautiful hilly country, with a glimpse of the sea…_ ”

A hand extended down from the murkiness above. There she was, reaching for him, coated in her voice as if it were armor protecting her from the laws of nightmares. Her hand skimmed his fingers.

He took it, and the dream dissipated. He saw only the reddish darkness of the back of his eyelids.

“ _I want a brighter word than bright, a fairer word than fair. I almost wish we were butterflies and lived but three summer days—_ ”

Now that he was somewhat awake, he could hear the wavering tightness in her voice; she was warding off tears. It was quiet, for his ears only. In fact, he could feel her breath against his cheek.

“ _—three such days with you I could fill with more delight than fifty common years could ever contain._ ”

He wanted to take what little strength he’d had in the dream and use it to squeeze her hand in reality, so that she might know he heard her, that he was here with her and not wandering lost in some far-off land between consciousness and death. But his body was heavy; he had not yet fully returned from the cliff.

He felt the back of her hand—so soft for such a rough world—rest upon his forehead.

Her breath caught. “Bellamy,” she rasped, “has your fever broken?”

*

 

A smile tore her face in half. She should be able to wake him up now, if his body had fought off most of the infection and was now cooling down. She’d been whisper-reading to him for so long she hadn’t checked his temperature in almost an hour.

“Bellamy,” she said, pushing his shoulder. “Can you wake up?”  
He groaned.

“Fucking hell.” His voice was hoarse. Clarke held a cup of water to his lips and thanked God when he was able to take a few swallows.

His eyes fluttered open.

“What time is it?”

“Not sure. Almost dawn.” She placed the cup back on the shelf behind the headboard. Her eyes focused out the window, at the dimly-lit clouds behind black trees. Unable to meet his eyes, she said, “You scared me.”

“Hey,” he said softly, “look at me. I’m sorry for scaring you.”

“I want to yell at you for challenging Octavia.” She thought for a moment. “No, I want to wring your neck. But Monty filled me in. I know why you did it.”

Bellamy sighed. “I was stupid. I got overwhelmed by my anger. Ever since we landed… I don’t know what’s wrong with me. It’s like all of a sudden I can’t listen to my head.”

“Don’t blame yourself. She’s your sister. And she lied to you. Put all of you in danger. I would have wanted to fight her too.”

“But you wouldn’t have. You would have stepped back and thought of a plan. You would have used your head.”

Clarke bit her lip. “Bellamy, when has that ever been true?”

He gave her a blank look.

“Before Praimfaya, I told you to use your head because I was afraid that I wouldn’t be there to balance you out. But Bellamy, I have never been able to be that kind of leader. It’s impossible.”

“What do you mean?”

“If I had been using my head, I wouldn’t have spent the first month after landing on the ground waiting for the Ark to come down and save us all. I would have listened to you and started building something permanent right away. If I’d been using my head, I would have sent you into Mount Weather sooner. I wouldn’t have stayed in Polis so long… and Lexa might still be alive. I wouldn’t have made a deal with Roan to give up fifty of our own spots in our radiation-proof Arkadia to let in fifty Azgeda. I did that so he wouldn’t kill you.”

She placed a tentative hand on his arm, leaning in a little closer. She felt drawn to him. “I would have shot you rather than let you open the bunker doors.” His eyes were sad and deepening with painful memories. She swallowed and gathered herself before she could drown in them. “No matter how much we try to ignore our hearts, we can’t,” she said. “Not when they’re standing right in front of us.”

Bellamy didn’t say anything for a while. He removed her hand from his arm and held it, playing with her fingers a little as he thought.

Then, he said, “You were gonna give Azgeda fifty spots? For me?”

Clarke blushed. In hindsight, it seemed ridiculous. “And Kane. But yeah. For you.”

“Maybe we’re lucky that plan never had a chance to work. That would have been embarrassing for you.”

She laughed. “Can you imagine how angry our people would have been?”

“Hell, _I_ would have been angry with you.”

“Why?”

“Fifty spots for just me and Kane?”

“Hypocrite. Apparently I’m worth 283.”

His grip on her hand tightened. “What did you expect, Clarke? I find out you’re alive and less than ten minutes later I arrive to you on the ground in a sea of enemies? Of course I’m gonna sacrifice two hundred people. In a heartbeat.”

“For the record,” she said softly, “I would have done the same.”

“I know.” Following this, his words became strangled by grief. “You sacrificed your own life for us. You were alone.”

Clarke wiped a tear from his eye with her free hand. “Stop that. I’m not alone anymore.”

“But—”

“Don’t pity me, Bellamy. You don’t get to pity me for a decision _I_ made.”

He shook his head vehemently. “This isn’t pity.”

“Then what is it?” she challenged him.

“It’s—it’s…” he stuttered. “I’m not sure. But I’ve never been able to pity you, Clarke. Not ever. You are too strong.”

He brought her hand to his lips. Kissed the back of it.

She let herself bask in his touch for only a few seconds before darting her hand away. “Stop,” she said in a strained voice.

He laughed indignantly. “Stop what?”

_Stop loving me._

_‘I am not a thing to be admired.’_

_I am not yours to love._

No explanation came to her that would be suitable for him to hear.

Madi chose that convenient moment to wake up.

“Clarke?” she murmured.

“I’m right here,” Clarke said, leaning down to touch her cheek.

Madi’s eyes shot fully open. “Is Bellamy okay?”

Clarke grinned.

“I’m good, Madi,” Bellamy piped up.

Madi came up and sat beside Clarke on his bed, eager to hear all about his fight with Octavia. Though it was apparent to Clarke that it pained Bellamy to talk about, he obliged Madi and recounted the details of their match.

Clarke watched as Madi became more and more enthralled by the story, and Bellamy grew more confident as a natural response to her enthusiasm.

Growing up alone on earth with only Clarke, Madi had been raised on stories. Her endless passion for storytelling gave Clarke a strange sense of pride. Her child had a passion, a fire inside of her. And Clarke was to thank… or blame.

Was an active imagination in a world like this one a blessing or a curse? Clarke had yet to find out.

 

The sun rose over the valley and the rest of Clarke’s friends woke up. As Madi and Bellamy continued chatting, Clarke went to the front of the house to check on each of them.

Monty was tired but doing better. Clarke helped him up and made sure he was stable enough to walk to the outhouse on his own, muttering “How much water did you put in me, Clarke?” as he went.

Then she checked on Harper, whose blood pressure was still low, but was remarkably stronger. “Thank you for coming back for us,” she said, hugging Clarke close. “You keep saving us.”

Echo was less happy to be awake, it seemed. She refused water when Clarke offered it.

“Echo,” she began, “you _have_ to drink.”

“I feel sick.”

“Water will help.”

“Just leave it on the table and let me sleep,” she said icily.

 _I’m not your maid_ , Clarke wanted to snap, but she kept her mouth shut and did as Echo asked. “Don’t you want to see Bellamy?” Clarke asked.

Echo looked to the ceiling, then over to the thin cloth partition that separated Clarke’s bedroom area from the rest of the house, through which you could see Madi sitting on Bellamy’s bed, talking animatedly. “I’m assuming he’s still alive?” Echo said.

Clarke nodded, very perturbed by the other girl’s behavior.

“Good. I just need to sleep.” She turned over and closed her eyes.

A sound like thunder but sharper rattled the morning.

A gunshot. From outside.

Clarke bounded for the door, stumbling down the steps and into the clearing.

“What the hell?” she shouted at the sight of Diyoza holding a gun to Abby’s head.

She ran and threw herself in front of her mother. Diyoza’s gun was level with her nose.

“What the hell is going on?” Clarke demanded, trying not to let the panic overwhelm her voice.

“With you here, we don’t need this useless doctor,” Diyoza said, her aim not wavering, “who makes promises she can’t keep.”

Shuffling came from the house. She glanced over to see her friends standing shocked on the steps. And someone coming to the door.

“ _Clarke!_ ” he called. Madi was helping him walk down the steps.

“Bellamy!” she shouted, enraged at his utter stupidity. “Get back in bed! Madi, you too! Get inside, all of you. _Please_.”

Diyoza was getting impatient. “Step aside, Clarke.”

Clarke lifted her chin. “ _No_. My mother is bound by an oath that I am not. You can’t make me look for a cure. I’m not obligated to save your men’s lives like she is.”

Diyoza cocked an eyebrow as if surprised by Clarke’s words. “You don't seem to understand. I have leverage” Slowly, Diyoza pointed her gun at Clarke’s friends. “Don’t test me, Clarke.”

“I’m not as trained as she is!” Clarke stressed. “I won’t be able to do it. She can. Only she can.”

“You were her apprentice. Your friends had to be carried into that house yesterday, and now they’re all up and walking. You’d do just fine finding us a cure. You’re stronger than your mother.”

Clarke didn’t know what Diyoza meant by that, but she was not letting her mother die. “I was only sixteen when they locked me up, remember?” she argued. “I have practical knowledge, but nothing beyond that. I didn’t even finish high school.”

A standstill.

Clarke licked her lips, eyeing Diyoza’s face as she came to a decision. Clarke went in for one last push. “You’d be a fool to shoot the only doctor you have,” she said.

Diyoza huffed, lowering her gun. Clarke let out a breath of tentative relief.

“Very well. You will _both_ work on the cure. Starting now.”

“But my friends—”

“ _Starting now._ ”

As Diyoza led them away, Clarke sent a pleading look over her shoulder to Bellamy. “Rest and hydrate. All of you. And take care of Madi until I get back. Take care of each other.”

“We will,” he promised her.

*

 

Bellamy was barely awake when Clarke stumbled into the house that night. She looked like she carried the weight of the world on her shoulders.

Everyone else was asleep. She quietly shuffled around in the kitchen, finally locating the leftovers from dinner that Madi had left out for her: salted meat and Madi’s special fruit salad. “ _I taught Clarke to make it the first week after we found each other. It’s her favorite_ ,” she had told him proudly.

He sat up in bed so he could see around the partition as Clarke collapsed in a chair by the kitchen table. He wanted to get her attention, but he didn’t want to wake Madi, so he waited for Clarke to finish eating and come, dragging her feet, to his bedside.

“Hey,” he whispered as she sat on the floor between Madi’s bed and her own, where Bellamy was. “Don’t sleep on the floor again.”

She looked up at him, eyes so tired and haunted that it scared him.

“What choice do I have?” she said.

He leaned down off the edge of the bed to get a closer look at her. “Clarke, what the hell happened?”

Her eyes blinked a few times, and she snapped out of whatever trance she’d been in. “Nothing to worry you with. Now let me take a look at your wounds.”

She wouldn’t share the bed with him, no matter how many times he insisted that it was her bed, that she should get some rest, that he’d sleep on the floor instead of her if it would make her more comfortable. The answer to everything was a short, cold, distant, “No.”

 

He hardly saw her for a week. Diyoza kept Clarke and her mother working from dawn until dusk, and Clarke was distant from him in the hours she was home.

During the day, he spent most of his time with Madi. She did Clarke’s job for the first day or two, diligently taking care of his still-healing friends, but then once everyone was doing better and required less care, she was hungry to hear more stories from him. He was happy to fulfill her any request. She also spent time reading to him, which he thoroughly enjoyed after spending so much time in space with nothing but _The Hobbit_.

Sometimes Raven and Shaw would stop by and spend time with them. Raven at least seemed to have more freedom now that Diyoza had realized how valuable she was.

After dinner Monty would help Bellamy from the bed and they’d gather near the fireplace, playing card games or listening to Madi read. Since they weren’t allowed out of the house, they had to come up with ways to keep themselves occupied.

To Bellamy’s relief, Echo avoided him as much as possible. When they did interact, it was awkward and brief, but at least they weren’t still fighting. Though Bellamy could sense her frustration with him simmering under the surface of her sunburnt skin, they kept their post-breakup relationship civil.

Monty jumped on Madi’s offer to teach him about the food she and Clarke grew in their garden just outside the house. Meanwhile, Harper spent her time either with Monty or with Echo, occasionally sitting on the floor by Bellamy’s bed just to talk. It felt like they were a family again. Almost.

He’d asked Raven where Murphy and Emori were, and she’d been cagey. “We’re not sure,” was all she’d said, followed by, “I’m trying.”

As for Clarke, he tried not to let her distance split his heart in two. He wasn’t doing a very good job.

One afternoon, he was drifting off in the middle of a Shelley poem when a scream cut through the valley, followed by another, and another.

Bellamy darted up from bed, clutching his side as he hobbled as quickly as he could to the front doors of Clarke’s house, then down the steps to see Clarke and Raven being carried from the gas station each between two miners.

He heard Monty cry out and run to catch Raven as the miners transferred her to him. Harper ran for Clarke and dragged her to the steps. Clarke was shaking, weak, and shellshocked.

“Clarke,” he said as gently as he could when she and Harper were standing right in front of him. He pushed the hair out of Clarke’s face, and to his surprise, she let him. “Are you all right? What happened?”

She met his eyes but when her mouth opened, no words came out.

“Let’s get you inside,” Harper said in her ear.

Bellamy stayed still as they went up the stairs, and looked to Raven and Monty as they approached.

“Raven,” Bellamy said, “what the hell happened?”

Raven sniffled. “Abby. I tried to destroy the machine.” Her voice was raspy. Familiar.

They’d been electrocuted by their collars.

“Fuck,” Bellamy breathed.

“Yeah,” Raven agreed. “Clarke tried to help me. Then Abby shocked us both. I didn’t— I don’t—” she was cut off by a sudden onslaught of tears.

Monty tightened his arm around her. “Shh. You need rest.”

They went inside. Harper approached Bellamy at the doors.

“Clarke’s not okay,” she informed him under her breath. “I can’t get her to talk to me.”

She was lying on her bed, curled up in a ball and shaking. Solemnly, he sat beside her.

“What can I do?” he asked after a few moments.

She wasn’t crying, which only scared Bellamy more. She looked at him with those wide, electric blue eyes, and said, “Stay with me.”

And so he did.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yes, i do own English Romantic Poets published by the American Book Company in 1935, why do you ask? lmao the only difference is that particular collection doesn't include the letter to fanny brawne that has the "i almost wish we were butterflies..." passage, which i think is unacceptable. so let's just pretend it does.
> 
> comments and kudos are always appreciated. actually your comments realllyy motivate me. y'all are wonderful. this chapter is a little shorter than usual but i just wanted to get it out to you asap.
> 
> as always, you can follow me/talk to me on tumblr @mermaeids!


	4. Breath

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> clarke yearns for isolation while bellamy challenges her. meanwhile, raven and shaw grow closer and face two horrifying truths together.

Warm. Something on her skin felt like sunlight with a pulse.

Skin against skin, breath against breath. Warmth breeding warmth.

Sleep left and was replaced by awakening and guilt.

 _Stupid, stupid_.

This shouldn’t have happened.

She slipped out of bed as swiftly as she could without waking him: the sleeping figure spread out under her sheets, his head on her pillow, his messy hair looking so soft she ached to touch it. Pure fondness bloomed in her chest. This boy. No. He was definitely a man now.

She’d asked him to stay, so he had stayed.

And her sleeping body clearly hadn’t harbored the same reservations as she did when it came to touching Bellamy, so of course she’d woken up pressed against him, half on top of him. In the few precious breaths between sleeping and waking, she’d dwelled in heaven on earth. Now, watching as consciousness teased his eyelids, her throat tightened.

She didn’t deserve it. She felt like a child clinging to something she couldn’t keep. _Put it back_ , said a voice in her head. _That’s not yours_.

She felt selfish. Indulgent.

 _Stupid, stupid_.

Six years ago, she’d held hot metal to her temple.

 

She sat at her kitchen table, sipping a dull-tasting tea in the hopes that it would calm her stomach. Could it possibly dim the pain in her neck where her mother had shocked her three times the day before? It burned to the touch and ached the rest of the time. Her head pounded in time with her heartbeat.

Her headache flared when Diyoza kicked open the door with such force that its handle slammed against the wall.

Bellamy shot up in bed, immediately on the defensive. Old habits die hard.

“Clarke,” Diyoza barked.

She flinched.

“Are you coming to the gas station or do you want me to give your shock collar another test?”

Bellamy stood and crossed the room in a flash, as if he didn’t see the guns in the hands of the two miners backing Diyoza (not aimed yet, but ready).

“She’s hurt,” Bellamy said. “Give her a day.”

“Our people are _dying_. We don’t have a day.”

Clarke, recovering from her initial shock, rose from her chair. “Bellamy, it’s okay—”

“ _No_ , it isn’t,” he said with a voice dipped in rage. He took another step towards Diyoza, hands tightened into fists.

The guns rose. He didn’t stand down.

Clarke rushed to place herself between him and Diyoza. She laid a hand on his chest, willing him to calm down. She breathed in and out, and he mimicked her, whether consciously or not, she didn’t know.

“I’ll go with you,” Clarke said to Diyoza, still holding Bellamy’s gaze, willing his emotions to steady.

She didn’t tear her eyes from his until Diyoza was pushing her down the steps.

 

*

 

The church was quiet. Shaw wondered what day it was. They used to have those. Days. Monday through Friday for work, Saturday for rest.

Sunday for church.

His mother used to drag the whole family every week, even his father. Shaw thought she did it because it was the one hour a week during which she could sit amongst other families and pretend that hers was no different. Make-up covered her bruises, and Shaw’s collared shirt covered his, once he got older and started bearing the burden of his father’s drunken rages. He turned himself into a target, like a sacrificial lamb throwing himself at the feet of a merciless god.

At church, his mother used to pray that his father would be forgiven. Shaw used to pray that his father would fall from a sufficiently tall cliff.

But this was not a place for prayer. Diyoza must not be a believer. To use a sanctuary as a prison must be the most brutal form of blasphemy. Raven’s collar had finally been removed after Abby shocked her, but now all of her friends wore them, and Shaw could see it was weighing on her. They both knew that Diyoza was testing Raven’s loyalty though, so she buried her distress deep. Too deep, in Shaw’s opinion. She was starting to worry him.

(He wasn’t supposed to worry about her.)

As the morning light grew stronger through the dusty windows, he watched her eyes open and tried not to notice the way the sun flecked her brown irises with gold. They’d been sleeping in cots next to each other. Shaw didn’t know why.

(He knew why.)

“You awake?” he whispered.

She sighed. “Not sure I want to be.”

“We’d better get back to the ship before Diyoza storms in here with guns blazing.” He was pretty sure they were already late. Diyoza had had them using the eye to spy on Wonkru—or so Raven’s friends called them—non-stop, cataloging strengths and weaknesses, any information that could help Diyoza win the impending fight.

Raven groaned and buried her face deeper into her pillow. “Let her.”

“But what would this world do without Raven Reyes?”

She shrugged. Shaw caught a glimpse of her cheek, which was pulled back in a smile. “Burn, I guess.”

“We can’t let that happen again, can we?”

“Ugh, _fine_.” She sat up in bed, flicking him on the nose before standing up and stretching her arms over her head, yawning. A thought seemed to cross her mind, and her arms dropped down to her sides. “What was coffee like?”

He grinned. “Glorious.”

“I could use some right about now.”

“Maybe one day we’ll have caffeine again.”

“Then you’ll owe me a coffee.”

“Are you asking me out, Reyes?” Shaw teased.

But her eyes suddenly grew serious. Contemplative. “Maybe I am.”

Before Shaw could close his hanging jaw, Raven was out the door.

 

* 

Clarke returned to a nearly empty house. She’d had a hell of a day working on a cure. Thankfully, Abby hadn’t been there. Clarke hated to admit it, but Diyoza’s point had nearly been proven: Abby was too unstable for the job. So Clarke had spent the day alone, combing through her mother’s notes and trying to continue her work. Raven had spent the afternoon working with her on the machine, which if Abby’s predictions are correct, will obliterate the masses in the miners’ lungs. Soon, they’d be ready to test on Vinson.

She wished the house was louder, more hectic like it had been for the past week so she wouldn’t have to face Bellamy, but the cots on which her friends had been sleeping were gone, her friends along with them. The one-room space was vacant save for one.

Bellamy. Sitting on the last remaining cot.

Looking up as she entered, he noticed her confusion.

“Everyone got their work assignments today. Diyoza re-wired their collars to the church with the other prisoners. She said I wasn’t strong enough yet.”

“That’s up to me to decide,” Clarke stated. “Not her.”

He raised his eyebrows. “You think I’m ready for work?”

“No, but she still could have moved you to the church. You don’t require constant care anymore.”

“You’re that desperate to get rid of me?”

“What do you want me to say?”

Bellamy stood and crossed his arms. The threat of confrontation made Clarke shrink into herself. “I want you to tell me where we stand,” he said.

The question hung in the air, and it was so paralyzing to her that Clarke deflected with, “Where’s Madi?”

“Raven stopped by, and Madi wanted to go with her to the ship.”

Clarke nodded. Madi was fascinated with technology, so Raven and Shaw often offered to watch her.

“Don’t change the subject.”

A sigh tore from her windpipe as she stared at the kitchen window, her lip stinging under her teeth. He never let her off the fucking hook. Why couldn’t he let her hide from him? Why did he have to drag her from the safety of her isolation kicking and screaming?

She crossed her arms across her chest and tried to keep her voice steady as she said, “Thank you for being there for me last night. But I’ve—I’ve had a long day. I can’t—”

He softened as soon as he realized how upset she was. “We’re only _talking_ , Clarke. I just want you to talk to me.”

Her lip stung sharper as she tentatively met his eyes. “I can’t lose you too.”

He stepped toward her.

“No—” she demanded. “Just—just let me be, please. It’s what I need.”

“But—”

She broke. “It’s _a lot_ , Bellamy,” she said, voice rising.

“What is?”

“You had people for those six years. I didn’t. It was just Madi and me and—everything is so _loud_. I’m not used to this. I just need some space.” It was a half-truth. The other side of it was the fact that she’d let herself be comforted by him last night; she’d let herself feel what she knew couldn’t be felt again, and now she ached for it even more than she had before. It hadn’t been anything more than falling asleep beside each other and waking up much closer… but it was still too much.

 _No right_.

She needed space.

“For how long?” Bellamy asked.

 _For as long as I need_ , she almost said, but something in his eyes held her back. Hurt. He was hurting. Why did she keep hurting him?

“Why?” she asked instead.

He smiled, giving a lighthearted shrug and meandering back toward the kitchen. “Because you had yourself for company all these years, but I didn’t. I went six years without Clarke Griffin and I, personally, need some more time with her because—”

Without thinking she launched herself at him, throwing her arms around his waist.

She felt his breath catch, his back against her chest, and then he chuckled, squeezing her hands.

“This is… the opposite of space.”

“Shut up,” she said into his spine.

“Clarke—” he turned around in her arms, “—you’re sending me some mixed signals.”

Needy, she pulled him closer again. “Sorry.”

“Don’t say sorry.” The humor had dissipated from his voice when he whispered against her ear, “What do you need?”

She almost shivered. Scared and confused, she buried her face deep into the juncture of his neck and shoulder, her cheek pressed to his throat so she felt it against her skin as he swallowed hard. If she could hide here forever, she would. If everything could stop and the world could let her stay here, where her eyes were closed and all she could smell was pine and leather and sweat, all she could hear was his breath, all she could feel was _Bellamy, Bellamy, Bellamy_ …

Asking her what she needed.

Asking her to speak the unspeakable.

“I don’t know.” _You, you, you_ …

He ran his hand over her hair. “You don’t have to know. It’s okay, Clarke.”

“No, it isn’t.”

“Why not?” His voice was soft enough to cut her to the bone, light enough to crush her under its weight.

She felt tears coming. “I—I—”

“ _Shhh_.”

The sun shone low over the trees, casting the room in a yellow glow. The wood was a glaring gold where there weren’t shadows of leaves to paint it darker. Anyone else would look at it and see black, or maybe gray. But Clarke, forever an artist at heart, saw it for what it was: deep, dark blue. Like the ocean. The sun and the ocean painted her house gold and blue during every exceptional sunset. As cruel as it had been to her, Earth was still the most beautiful place she could imagine.

Bellamy was finally here to share it with her. And the voices in her head were too loud for her to let him in.

Bellamy could never love Clarke. She couldn’t keep kidding herself.

She’d lost too many people. Her mother had shown her the truth with three presses of a remote button. Turns out Clarke wasn’t as loved as she’d fooled herself into thinking. Her neck ached.

She used to thank God every day that she would never again feel what she felt in the desert those first months after Praimfaya, but now she missed it. No, _craved_ it: the pain of isolation solely because of distance, not because her mother loved pills more than she loved her, and not because Bellamy fell in love with another woman, and not because her friends were practically strangers to her now.

 _If they could be with me,_  she used to repeat to herself over and over again, _they would._

Maybe she’d been lying to herself.

If she had known that this would have been how she’d feel when they finally came back to her, she would have seen the bird fly back to her and pulled the trigger anyway.

But here, in Bellamy’s arms, her sorrows were momentarily suspended, trapped in the air above her rather than brewing in her head. He was her shield. Always had been, really.

Wasn’t her place. She held him tighter. Wasn’t her place.

 _No right, no fucking right_ —

“Echo and I broke up,” he breathed as if he had been reading her thoughts.

A sigh left her. Relief? Anger? She had no idea. The sorrows came back, but scrambled. What did he mean?

“What do you mean?”

He gave her a quizzical look, yet free of judgement. Always free of judgement with her. Never cross if she was slow.

“I mean,” he said, taking a breath and tucking his hands into his pockets. “I’m not with her anymore. Romantically. You know what I mean. I don’t know what we were, well, in the context of space and everything—like are you dating if there’s nowhere to go on a date? So we’re not—we’re not seeing each other anymore, I guess. And I don’t want you to think—”

“Think what?” That he would have stayed with her last night if he’d still been with Echo?

“That you’re not important.”

“That’s not why you broke up with her, is it?” Clarke said, panic closing its meaty fist around her throat. Why couldn’t she stop hurting him? He came back to earth and she had ruined anything that he’d ever cared about, It was all her, all her fault. She was a ghost, a disease that ate away at everything that touched it, a desert worm—

“Clarke, _shhh_ , no.” He grabbed her shoulders. Breathed in, breathed out. Clarke found herself mirroring him. Her labored breathing slowed.

“It was mutual,” he continued gently. “We had a… a disagreement. In the desert. Before you got to us.”

Clarke nodded, her eyes wide. She couldn’t quite meet his gaze, which was steadily trained on her face.

“That was a week ago,” Clarke said. “Why didn’t you tell me? Are you okay? I’m sorry, Bellamy.” Numbness was all she felt at the moment, but soon she expected the relief would seep in.

“Don’t be. I’m okay with it. Honestly, the stab wound took up most of my thoughts this past week.”

“Is this why Echo has been so cranky lately?”

Bellamy grimaced. “She has, hasn’t she…”

She shrugged. “I can handle it.”

“You shouldn’t have to. I’ll talk to her about being a little nicer around you.”

“Why? We were never exactly friends, you know.”

“Yeah, but… she’s too accustomed to revenge. She’s gotten better since—”

Clarke stepped away from him, alarm bells ringing in her head. “Revenge?”

He seemed to realize his mistake a second later than she had. “Fuck. Clarke, that’s not—”

“So it had to do with me? It _is_ my fault?”

“Clarke, no—”

But she’d already fled the building, leaving Bellamy burning in the blaze she left behind.

 

Bellamy laid his head in his hands.

Clarke always broke him. Brutally. Without even trying. It was why she ran away from him.

It was exactly why he loved her.

 

*

 

Raven bit her lip. Let it slip through her teeth. Then bit it again. Glanced over at Shaw. Glanced away again.

A rhythm, gaining tempo over hours in front of video feeds, testing limits: a collision happening in slow motion.

Her hand grazed his over a control board. His shoulder brushed against hers as he moved behind her.

Madi provided the only interruptions, and Raven welcomed them.

“What’s that?” the twelve year old would ask, followed by, “What does it do? How does it work?” And, the hardest of all: “How was it made?”

“I don’t know, kid,” Shaw called out from where hunched over the encrypted Eligius III file. He and Raven had been taking turns taking swings at it because analyzing Wonkru patterns of behavior was just so damn boring. “My job is to know what to do with tech, not how it came to be.”

Madi shrugged. “Clarke and I make all of our things.”

“Have you made a ship that can sustain hundreds in cryo sleep with a dropship that has detachable drones and missile launch systems built in?”

The girl hummed. “We’re working on it.”

He gave a deep, room-shaking laugh. “You’re a riot, kid.”

Raven smirked. “Clarke’s kid. Of fucking course.”

“Raven, language!” Shaw said.

“The world’s ended _twice_ , Shaw, but God forbid a twelve year old hears the word _‘fuck’_!”

“Clarke says that a lot. Mostly when she gets hurt. Or if she’s talking on the radio and doesn’t think I’m listening.”

Raven laughed and started to continue with her work until she replayed what Madi said in her head. _On the radio_. She turned around. Madi was lying on the floor, drawing on a piece of paper with a real pen. She’d been excited about the real pen.

“Wait,” Raven said, “when would you hear Clarke on the radio?”

Madi rolled her eyes. “Every day,” she replied, as if it were obvious. “When’s dinner?”

“No, go back. Why was Clarke on the radio?”

Madi huffed. “Are you gonna ask me how the radio was made next, or are we done with dumb questions?”

Raven was at a loss. “Madi, who was Clarke calling?”

“ _Bellamy_ , stupid. Well, sometimes she’d talk to you too, or maybe Murphy or Monty or Harper. But it was always Bellamy. Every day.”

Raven’s world faltered, didn’t know how to spin anymore. “For six years?” she said, gaping. Disbelief, guilt, and self-loathing overheated her system until she could feel her entire body burning up from the inside.

“That’s how long you were in space, wasn’t it?”

Raven burst into tears and ran from the room.

 

Shaw immediately shot up to run after Raven, as if it had been wired into his brain when he’d been made: _if a girl is crying, help her._

On his way out, he called out to Madi. “It’s not nice to call people stupid. Oh, and you kinda have to come with me because Clarke would kill me if I left you alone.”

Hearing little footsteps pattering behind him accompanied by a quiet, “ _sorry_ ,” Shaw ran outside to where Raven had retreated to the treeline and was kneeling on the ground, her head bent over her legs and her cheeks in her hands.

“Stay here,” he said to Madi at the edge of the clearing, then slowly approached Raven. The sound of her crying was the worst thing he’d ever heard, he decided right then. The worst sound in the universe, much of which he’d seen.

“Raven,” he said quietly.

“Go away, Shaw!”

“I’m not gonna go away. I’m gonna sit right here—” he sat across from her on the detritus-carpeted forest floor, “—and I’m gonna sit here until you tell me what’s wrong or you stop crying. Whichever comes first.”

Raven sobbed on, not looking up until they heard Madi start throwing rocks at a nearby tree, trying to hit a target that had been carved there, probably years ago.

Raven’s face softened. “She didn’t mean to upset me,” she explained. “She didn’t know that I hardly tried to fix the comm system.”

“You had no way of knowing that Clarke was alive.”

“But we never even thought—we never even believed in her enough to think she survived.”

Shaw grimaced. “Doesn’t matter how much you believe in someone when you see a planet in flames. Radiation flames. You did nothing wrong.”

“But she wanted to talk to Bellamy—and to us. She was alone with a child and she called us  _every fucking day_. What do I do with this—how do I just let that information glide by me when I did nothing for her? She gave her life for ours and I didn’t even try to fix the comms.”

Shaw shook his head, pressing his thumb under her chin so she would meet his eyes. “Listen to me. You spent six years working tirelessly to fix that ship so that you could see her again. Because of you, she isn’t alone anymore. You got back to her. You did that.”

“But I could have done more.”

“Reyes, if you don’t see how brilliant you are, how hard you work, how much you’ve done for your friends, then I can’t help you. Because it’s _so obvious_. It’s right there. Everyone sees it. Everyone would be dead if it weren’t for you. Madi’s stories have told me that much.”

He smiled, realizing not for the first time how extraordinary the woman before him truly was. He’d been so blessed to end up on the same planet, in the same lifetime, as she. If he had known back in that Michigan church that she would one day exist, he would have prayed to meet her, to hold her cheek in his hand as he was right now.

“You’re amazing, Raven,” he murmured.

Then her fingers were grabbing his face and pulling him closer to her, and her lips were colliding with his.

“Ugh! I’m telling Clarke!” they heard Madi exclaim, but they paid her no mind.

No, Shaw’s mind was distracted.

She was firm but not rough, eager but not desperate. This was the kind of kiss Shaw would have pictured having in front of a movie theater on a snowy evening, on a beach at sunset, up against his beat-up motorcycle on the shoulder of a deserted highway under the moonlight.

Raven was a girl from the future who made him ache for a past that didn’t exist. Raven was the only reason he didn’t yearn to return to mid-21st century Michigan every night before he fell asleep. He’d rather be here.

Thank God he was here.

 

* 

Clarke quite literally didn’t have anywhere else to go without getting shocked— _in her own damn valley_ —so she fled to the gas station.

To her utter surprise, it was occupied.

“Diyoza,” Clarke said by way of greeting. The older woman was bent over the half-finished device.

“You think this will get rid of it?” Diyoza said.

Clarke stood next to her. “Once I get the settings just right, then yes.”

Diyoza swallowed. “Will it be dangerous?”

A thought occurred to Clarke. “Did my mom check you like she did the others?”

“I was checked on the ship,” Diyoza replied automatically.

Clarke narrowed her eyes. “Then why are you so scared?”

Anger flared before flickering out in Diyoza’s eyes. She frowned, leaning her hands on the table and letting out a shuddering breath. “I already know I’m sick. And I need a cure that won’t be dangerous.”

Clarke shrugged. “Well, all treatments carry a little risk for the patient.”

“I’m not talking about myself.” Slowly, Diyoza began shedding her vest, then the collared shirt underneath.

Clarke gasped.

“It’s a girl,” Diyoza said.

Clarke looked up at her, gaping. “McCreary’s?” she said without thinking.

Diyoza looked as if she were about to slap her. “How the fuck did you know that?”

Hadn’t it been obvious? She shook her head, at a loss. “Lucky guess.” She snapped out of confusion-mode and back into doctor mode, clearing her throat. “How far along?”

“Five months.”

“Any cramping?”

“I think just gas.”

“Any bleeding?”

“Spotting at first, but none for a while.”

“How about kicking?”

“Oh, yes. She’s a fighter.”

Clarke smiled. “Can I feel?”

“What?”

She caught herself, blushing profusely and wondering why on earth she wanted to feel her enemy’s pregnant belly. “Sorry,” she said, “I haven’t seen a baby in years.”

Diyoza smirked. “Go ahead.” She lightly took Clarke’s wrist and placed it on the right lower quadrant of her rounded abdomen, and Clarke only had to wait a moment before she felt it: a tiny, beautiful kick.

“A fighter, indeed.” It was odd to see Diyoza in this new, glowing-mother light. Life was full of contradictions, but this had to be one of the most jarring.

“Did Madi kick?” Diyoza asked.

“Uh—I wouldn’t know,” Clarke said. “I’m twenty-four, to begin with, so no, I did not have Madi when I was twelve. I found her after Praimfaya and took her in.”

“Forgive me,” Diyoza said. “I just assumed she was yours and Bellamy’s.”

Clarke sucked in a sharp breath through her teeth. “About that… you’ve referred to him as—Bellamy isn’t—Bellamy and I aren’t together.”

Diyoza laughed. “Are you serious?”

“Yeah.”

“That’s hilarious.”

Clarke shot her a look. “We should go back to talking about how you’re possibly dying of a not-yet-curable disease and you’re gonna be a mother in four months.”

“Or you just want to change the subject.”

“How perceptive of you.”

“You are a younger version of me, Miss Clarke.”

Miss Clarke. She’d been called many things: Princess, Commander of Death, Mountain Slayer, Nightblood, hypocrite. But she hadn’t simply been “Miss” in a long time.

“Did you have the deaths of hundreds on your shoulders by the time you weren’t even nineteen?”

Diyoza frowned. “By twenty-nine, yes. We all do what’s best for our people.”

“Don’t compare my sacrificing hundreds of lives to keep mine alive to you terrorizing cities to get your way.”

“Don’t pretend that you don’t also think your way is the best way. The _only_ way. Maybe if I hadn’t been betrayed, the world would have never gone up in flames the first time. We are the same. And we would both kill for our daughters. Would both die for them. So if this treatment kills me—”

“It won’t,” Clarke said, surprised at how fierce it came out.

“Then prove it. Tomorrow, test it on Vinson.”

“But—”

“No. I’m tired of waiting. Worst case, the world loses a cannibal. We apparently have plenty more where he came from.”

The cannibalism had come up when Diyoza had interrogated Clarke about why her friends left Polis.

“Fine,” Clarke said, part of her agreeing with Diyoza and part of her knowing that soon her time to find a cure would run out if Diyoza’s patience stretched too thin. But she knew she wouldn’t be ready by tomorrow. “Give me three days.”

“Good. Three days, then.”

“Three days.”

Diyoza turned to leave, but Clarke said, “Colonel Diyoza?”

She turned around. “Yes?”

Clarke had told herself she wouldn’t ask, but the words spilled out anyway. “Where are you keeping my mother?”

“She’s… very ill. Hardly able to stand, but being cared for.”

“Cared for?” Clarke repeated questioningly, a knife tucked between the words

Diyoza nodded. “By Kane. In the church. You have nothing to worry about.”

And for once, Clarke believed her captor.

 

*

It had rained last night. Murphy hated mud. His boots were sturdy, waterproof, but not even they could keep his feet dry after a week in the woods, sleeping in caves and spying on their enemies.

He and Emori were stationed behind the gas station when Murphy nudged her.

“Something’s wrong,” he said.

The plan had been to sneak into the gas station and talk to Clarke, but now the valley was slowly dissolving into chaos fueled by fear and urgency.

“They’re marching!” came a yell from the ship, and it traveled from mouth to mouth until the camp was a stirring whirlwind.

Murphy had eyes on Diyoza, who was on her own warpath towards the gas station.

“Fuck.”

 

Clarke was looking out the window, trying to discern what was going on, when Diyoza barged in.

“We’re testing him now,” she yelled.

“What?”

“Vinson!” shouted Diyoza, her voice laced with desperation.

She had her men strap Vinson to the table, and all Clarke could do was watch.

“What the hell is going on?” Clarke demanded.

Diyoza’s eyes were wide and wild, glazed over with fear. “Wonkru is marching. We need a cure. Now.”

“Colonel—”

“We’re going to lose, Clarke! _Three-fourths_ of my men. We’re _dead_!”

“The cure isn’t—”

“Test him.”

“You said three—”

Diyoza’s men raised their guns and pointed at Clarke.

“Cure him. Now.”

One of them, a tall woman with curly black hair, nudged Clarke’s back with the tip of a gun. This wasn’t a negotiation.

“It won’t work yet,” Clarke warned.

“You’ve had long enough.”

“My mother—”

“Is _useless_. You’re all we have. Cure him. _Now_.”

The cold head of the gun dug into her spine. Sighing, Clarke reached to position the device over Vinson’s lungs.

Saying a prayer for forgiveness, she activated the machine.

Two minutes later, Vinson was dead on the table.

Diyoza and her men left, chaining the door shut. “You won’t be let out until you give us a cure.”

And Clarke was alone.

 

  
*

It was hours before night fell and the camp settled. There was still a lingering, underlying tension in the air around the campfires where Eligius prisoners ate and conversed with one another, but the chaos was gone.

Murphy thrived in chaos. His fingers twitched with hunger for it.

He palmed the grenade in his jacket pocket.

“Are we a go?” asked Emori.

Murphy nodded. “Operation Save Clarke is a go.”

She chuckled and ruffled his hair. “You’re a dork.”

His breath caught. She said she didn’t want him, and he had to respect that, but she still drove him crazy.

“I love you,” he whispered as he trudged away through the mud, far enough away so she wouldn’t hear him.

He skirted the edge of camp, unpinning the grenade.

He smirked. The one thing he could do right: start a riot.

 

Emori covered her ears as the explosion sounded, rippling through the valley.

That was her queue.

The valley distracted by the explosion, Emori snuck to the side door of the gas station unseen. It took her only seconds to pick the lock and unwind the chains.

When she entered the dark room, she could see a small bundle on the floor.

A human curled up, shaking.

“Clarke,” Emori breathed. The room reeked of death. They hadn’t even discarded the body of the failed test subject. Maybe Diyoza had left the body there as a warning, a motivating factor. It was sick.

She covered her mouth and kneeled on the floor. Hesitantly, as if approaching an injured bird, she placed her hand on Clarke’s shoulder.

Clarke raised her head, a look of lost bewilderment on her face. Pain was present everywhere in her stance, her trembling, the harsh lines down her pale face. It was enough to make Emori’s heart sink down into her ribcage.

“I’m here,” was all she said, and it seemed to comfort Clarke.

“Thank you,” she said.

“No,” Emori insisted. “Thank _you_. You saved us all.” She kissed Clarke’s cheek, since it was clear by her demeanor that she was in no state to be hugged or crowded.

Clarke gave a pathetic excuse for a smile, but a smile nontheless.

“Let’s get you home,” said Emori.

 

Emori took cover while Clarke ran toward the house. After being locked in the station for almost ten hours with a rotting body for company and nothing to keep her warm, Clarke needed to see Madi, see Bellamy. She needed to warm herself up, figure out a way to escape Diyoza’s wrath.

But she was too late. Clarke was only halfway across the clearing when Diyoza walked out of Clarke’s house with a gun to Madi’s head.

The terror on Madi’s face nearly made Clarke cry out. Little girls weren’t meant to face death. She noticed Bellamy behind Diyoza just inside the house, being held back by three of her men, a look like murder in his eyes which were trained on Diyoza.

“Go back to the station,” Diyoza ordered.

Clarke put her hands up, keeping her eyes on Madi. “Now—”

“ _My daughter will die!_ ” Diyoza screamed. The hand holding the gun shook. “If I can’t have my daughter, then you can’t have yours. Go back to the station and I won’t shoot.”

She wouldn’t give in. The walls of the station had closed around her and spat out a hard, lonesome woman. The sand under her knees, the sun beating down her back, setting her radiation burns on fire. She was back there. About to lose everything she loved, about to lose her freedom.

Emori had given Clarke a gun.

Clarke pulled it from the holster and pressed it against her temple.

Distantly, she heard Bellamy cry out, but she had tunnel vision. The world was only Clarke and her daughter, only Diyoza and her daughter.

“ _I’m_ running things, Diyoza. I’m your only hope at a cure before Wonkru storms through our weakened defenses and kills everyone in this valley. If you ever want to see your baby girl’s face, you’ll lower your weapon.”

“Clarke, no!” cried Madi.

She didn’t bother with _It’s okay,_ or _Everything will be fine_ , because Madi could always tell when she was lying.

“You won’t do it,” Diyoza said. “Go back to the station and no one has to die.”

“I will. I _will_ do it. And you know I will too, because I’m just like you, and we’ve both known the feeling of holding a weapon against ourselves in the depths of an impossible situation. You have ten seconds.”

“Clarke—”

“TEN!”

“ _Clarke, put it down! Please, Clarke, put it down!_ ” Was that even Bellamy’s voice? It sounded ripped apart, unhinged, like the hard shell of a bomb shattering upon detonation.

“You won’t do it,” Diyoza said.

“NINE!”

The world came in and out of focus. At seven, Diyoza’s stance first wavered.

By “ _FOUR!”_  the colonel’s face was coated in tears of stubbornness.

“ _TWO!_ ”

Diyoza stood down.

 

Bellamy’s knees buckled. In a flash Madi was across the clearing and in Clarke’s arms. Murphy’s hand was on his shoulder. His friend’s voice him was asking if he was okay, telling him to breathe, but Bellamy was already sagging with relief, feeling his heart slow to a slightly less painful rhythm.

“I’m okay,” he muttered to Murphy, catching his breath.

Clarke held Diyoza’s eyes. “I’ll continue working tomorrow,” Clarke said to her, sounding more like an order than anything else.

Diyoza nodded begrudgingly and retreated to the ship.

Bellamy watched Clarke, feeling numb.

When he and Madi had learned that she’d been locked in the gas station, they’d tried to get her, but Diyoza had upped the security around the house and they were forced inside.

“Are you okay?” Madi was asking her over and over again.

“I’m good, Madi,” Clarke assured her. “I just need a bath and a good night’s sleep.”

“I’ll get water.”

“Thank you, Madi. I’m sorry that happened.”

Madi shrugged, surprisingly strong about all of this. “Like you used to say,” she said, “ _just another day on the ground_.”

While Madi grabbed a bucket and went to the creek by the side of the house, Clarke greeted Murphy.

“Hey, Cockroach,” he said, giving her a quick hug. “If you ever do that again I’ll kill you.”

She grimaced. “Sorry.”

“I missed you,” he said honestly.

“I missed you, too,” she said.

Murphy glanced over at Bellamy and then announced that he was going to go help Madi warm the water on the fire.

Clarke collapsed into Bellamy’s arms, or rather, didn’t fight him when he pulled her close.

“You smell like death,” he said.

“Hey. You’ve smelled better, too,” she replied.

He ran his fingers up and down her spine. He could feel her slowly relaxing, the stress melting from her system. “When you said…” he murmured, “You’d felt what it’s like to hold a weapon against yourself…”

Clarke sighed and looked up at him. “We’re gonna need that drink.”

 

Madi and Raven helped Clarke bathe, not because she necessarily needed it but because they wanted to. Raven washed Clarke’s hair with homemade soap while Madi scrubbed in between her toes. Clarke let herself fall into their embraces, accepting their love without putting up a fight. She was too tired; she had fought for too long.

Weary, sleepy, but warm, Clarke sat beside Bellamy on the couch. Madi was asleep, Raven gone, and the house was quiet.

Two glasses of moonshine glimmered on the coffee table.

Bellamy held up his glass, and Clarke clinked hers against it.

This was where they let each other see the darkest parts of themselves. This was where she finally told Bellamy the true meaning of six years. After one deep, shuddering breath, Clarke began to speak.

“Six years ago, I held a gun to my head…”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey sorry this took so long i'm in college now so !!!!! i'm busy af. i hope this is legible and worth the wait!!
> 
> tumblr: discovering
> 
> check out my patreon for original fiction https://www.patreon.com/juliacarol


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